Shell Programming and Scripting

I'm new to shell scripting and would like to know what would be the best syntax to delete multiple directories in the same location? This is what I tried but it didn't work.

echo "clearing webtop and da cache."
su - $TOMCAT_USER -c rm -rf /usr/local/apache-tomcat-6.0.18/work/Catalina/localhost/"webtop da"


Please let me know how I can make this better or just work. Thx guys!

What is the criteria for multiple directories ?

-- all the directories under one directory
-- directories with a specific name pattern
-- directories with an unique timestamp
-- directories that are specific to a process or log
-- directories that are dummy created by some process and needs to be cleaned up..

Basically, Every time tomcat starts, It goes into that directory path and delete everything in webtop and da sub-directories and directory itself.

this should work,

Code:

su - $TOMCAT_USER -c rm -rf /usr/local/apache-tomcat-6.0.18/work/Catalina/localhost/webtop
su - $TOMCAT_USER -c rm -rf /usr/local/apache-tomcat-6.0.18/work/Catalina/localhost/da

unless if you have other thoughts of wrapping up 'rm' command with a custom logic to log the files and other information as per need into a file before actually deleting the directories / files

Is there a way of deleting them on a single line?

Did you mean this ?

Code:

su - $TOMCAT_USER -c rm -rf /usr/local/apache-tomcat-6.0.18/work/Catalina/localhost/webtop /usr/local/apache-tomcat-6.0.18/work/Catalina/localhost/da