How can I change a Bash variable name in a loop and then expand the changed name?

Question

I'm trying to expand variables Bash. I've searched but am not sure what the search terms are for what I am trying to do. Here is my code. Two questions:

1. How do I get the desired output as shown?
2. What is the Bash terminology to describe what I want here?

# Set Library install directories
install_dir_1=~/Desktop/arduino-1.8.4
install_dir_2=~/Desktop/arduino-1.8.5
install_dir_3=~/Desktop/arduino-1.8.5a

x=0

while [ $x -lt 4 ]; do

    let x=x+1 

    install_dir=install_dir_$x
    #echo $install_dir

    install_dir=$install_dir   
    #echo $install_dir

    dir_Adafruit_SSD1306=$install_dir/libraries/Adafruit_SSD1306/
    echo $dir_Adafruit_SSD1306

done

Actual output is

install_dir_1/libraries/Adafruit_SSD1306/
install_dir_2/libraries/Adafruit_SSD1306/
install_dir_3/libraries/Adafruit_SSD1306/
install_dir_4/libraries/Adafruit_SSD1306/

Desired output is

~/Desktop/arduino-1.8.4/libraries/Adafruit_SSD1306/
~/Desktop/arduino-1.8.5/libraries/Adafruit_SSD1306/
~/Desktop/arduino-1.8.5a/libraries/Adafruit_SSD1306/

Answer 1

It's called dereferencing variables and, while possible, is really not necessary here. So, yes, you could use the same approach and use dereferencing as shown below:

#!/bin/bash
# Set Library install directories
install_dir_1=~/Desktop/arduino-1.8.4
install_dir_2=~/Desktop/arduino-1.8.5
install_dir_3=~/Desktop/arduino-1.8.5a

x=1

while [ $x -lt 4 ]; do
    ## Set the instal_dir variable to point to the
    ## name of the variable you want to dereference
    install_dir="install_dir_$x"
    ## Dereference the variable using the ${!var} notation
    install_dir=${!install_dir}

    dir_Adafruit_SSD1306="$install_dir/libraries/Adafruit_SSD1306/"
    echo "$dir_Adafruit_SSD1306"
    let x=x+1 

done

But this is really way too complex. Here's a simplified version that does the same thing:

#!/bin/bash
install_dirs=("~/Desktop/arduino-1.8.4" 
              "~/Desktop/arduino-1.8.5" 
              "~/Desktop/arduino-1.8.5a")

for((x=0;x<${#install_dirs[@]};x++)); do 
    install_dir=${install_dirs[$x]}
    echo "$install_dir"
done