Wildcards and special characters to define host names

You can use special characters when defining host group members under the GROUP_MEMBER column to specify hosts. These are useful to define several hosts in a single entry, such as for a range of hosts, or for all host names with a certain text string.

If a host matches more than one host group, that host is a member of all groups. If any host group is a condensed host group, the status and other details of the hosts are counted towards all of the matching host groups.

When defining host group members, you can use string literals and the following special characters:

Tilde (~) excludes specified hosts or host groups from the list. The tilde can be used in conjunction with the other special characters listed below. The following example matches all hosts in the cluster except for hostA, hostB, and all members of the groupA host group:
```
... (all ~hostA ~hostB ~groupA)
```
Asterisk (*) represent any number of characters. The following example matches all hosts beginning with the text string “hostC” (such as hostCa, hostC1, or hostCZ1):
```
... (hostC*)
```
Square brackets with a hyphen ([integer1 - integer2]) define a range of non-negative integers at the end of a host name. The first integer must be less than the second integer. The following example matches all hosts from hostD51 to hostD100:
```
... (hostD[51-100])
```
Square brackets with commas ([integer1, integer2 ...]) define individual non-negative integers at the end of a host name. The following example matches hostD101, hostD123, and hostD321:
```
... (hostD[101,123,321])
```
Square brackets with commas and hyphens (such as [integer1 - integer2, integer3, integer4 - integer5]) define different ranges of non-negative integers at the end of a host name. The following example matches all hosts from hostD1 to hostD100, hostD102, all hosts from hostD201 to hostD300, and hostD320):
```
... (hostD[1-100,102,201-300,320])
```

Restrictions

You cannot use more than one set of square brackets in a single host group definition.

The following example is not correct:

... (hostA[1-10]B[1-20] hostC[101-120])

The following example is correct:

... (hostA[1-20] hostC[101-120])

You cannot define subgroups that contain wildcards and special characters. The following definition for groupB is not correct because groupA defines hosts with a wildcard:

Begin HostGroup
GROUP_NAME   GROUP_MEMBER
groupA       (hostA*)
groupB       (groupA)
End HostGroup