I have a script that lists all files in a directory, lists them in alphabetical order, and places the number of the file before the filename. #!/bin/bash x=1 cd ~/bin for f in * do if [ -f $f ]; then echo "$x: $f" declare a$x=$f x=$(expr $x + 1) fi done read -p "What would you like to execute?: " num $num Output would be 1: file0 2: file1 3: file2 etc Running $num will execute the command a1 which is not a command. What I want to do is run what $a1 is equal to (ie file0). How can I do this?