Anyone out there know how, in a one line UNIX Command, I could rename(mv) a file that contains variable string as part of its name. The variable string is the process instance number.

For example, I'd like to be able to rename XX_XXXXX_nnnnn.pdf (where nnnnn is a number and its value depends on the process instance number it was created in) to bkp_XX_XXXXX_nnnnn.pdf.

Thanks in advance.

In ksh $$ = the process id. For this example I assume a procces id is the same as your process instance -

Thanks Jim, unfortunately I wish to rename the prior instance of the file, so don't know the process id other than its part of the file.

Is there any way to pipe the output from the ls command into mv?

In ksh:

ls *.pdf | while read f ; do echo mv $f bkp_$f ; done

Run it as above and let it echo the commands it would do. If it looks good, rerun the above command but remove the "echo". This will actually do the move.

Perderabo,

that is awesome. Thanks very much for your help.