Ubuntu – Alias nested string

You can't do it like this because /home/user/ is not a command. It't more like a static string.

From man bash (somewhere at line 1984):

Aliases allow a string to be substituted for a word when it is used as the first word of a simple command.

In your case, execloc will never be the first word of a simple command.

But, instead to define execloc as an alias, you can define it as an environment variable:

export execloc='/home/user/'

And then you can use it everywhere you want as follow:

cd $exeloc/temp/somefolder

What you're doing is tricky. The normal way is to avoid this and just pass the array values as arguments. In order to have both options, you would have to use eval:

#!/bin/bash
function populate_array () {
    if [ "$#" -gt 0 ] ; then
        # Enter array w/ elements as argument of executable 
        # Note the quotes, they are needed
        array=("$@");
        n=$#
    else
        # Invoke executable with no arg, enter array element later
        # Read a string instead of an array and use eval to make it
        # into an array. That way, you can use tricks like escaping
        # spaces. You also need the -r option to protect the backslashes
        # so that eval will see them. 
        read -r  -p "Enter array elements separated by spaces: " string
        eval array="( $(printf '%s\n' "$string") )"
        n=${#array[@]} 
    fi
    printf "%d array elements \n" "$n"
} 

populate_array "$@"

while (("$n" > 0))   # while [ "$n" -gt 0 ] ALSO WORKS
do
    printf "%s \n" "${array[$n-1]}"
    n=$n-1
done
exit 0

You still need to escape the parentheses if you pass the array values as an argument since ( ) are reserved characters for bash. With that caveat, the script above should work as you expect:

$ foo.sh lkl1239 343.4l 3,344 \(34\) "lklk  lkl" lkaa\ lkc
6 array elements 
lkaa lkc 
lklk  lkl 
(34) 
3,344 
343.4l 
lkl1239 

And

$ foo.sh
Enter array elements separated by spaces:  lkl1239 343.4l 3,344 \(34\) "lklk  lkl" lkaa\ lkc 
6 array elements 
lkaa lkc 
lklk  lkl 
(34) 
3,344 
343.4l 
lkl1239