Expanding a bit on what Andrew already said...

Did you try the code I suggested in post #2 in this thread?

If so, in what way did it fail?

Are you saying that you have some files that will match the filename matching pattern audit.log-$filename_time2* that are regular files and there are other filenames matching that pattern at the same time that are of some other filetype?

From what you stated in post #1, I assumed that you either had one or regular files that would match that pattern or that there were no existing files that would match that pattern. If that is the case, the code I suggested should have done exactly what you wanted it to do (assuming that you are using a shell that meets a fairly minimal subset of the requirements for the shell command programming language specified by the POSIX standards).

The code that you are trying (calling test (or it alias [) with multiple filename operands or with a quoted filename matching pattern containing wild-card characters cannot ever be convinced to do what you are trying to do if more than one file exists matching that pattern. The test with more than one file operand is always going to give you the diagnostic message you reported seeing in post #1.

If, however, it is always the case that at least one existing filename will match your filename matching pattern, then there is no need for the test command at all and you can just replace your entire script with:

Code:

filename_time2=`date --date='yesterday' +%Y-%m-%d`
cd /location/of/the/files/to/copy
cp server.log-$filename_time2* ../archive/new
exitcode=$?
echo copying attempted
exit $exitcode

but, at least it will give you a non-zero exit code if it failed to copy one or more files successfully.

The $( command ) form of command substitution is preferred over the ` command ` form unless you are using a 1970's Bourne shell that doesn't accept the preferred form.