If you know the name of a variable which contains a value of interest, you need indirect referencing to retrieve the value, this is how you do it.
#!/bin/bash j=1 #variable containg a value i=j #variable containing the name of the variable which holds the value eval k=\$$i #k now contains the value of j which is 1 echo $k j=2 k=${!i} #another way of indirectly referencing echo $k