Why doesn't using two cd commands in bash script execute the second command?

Solution 1:

The culprits are your exec bash statements in some of your functions. The exec statement is a bit weird and not easily understood in the first place. It means: execute the following command instead of the currently running command/shell/script from here on. That is: it replaces the current shell script (in your case) with an instance of bash and it never returns.

You can try this out with a shell and issue

exec sleep 5

This will replace your current shell (the bash) with the command sleep 5 and when that command returns (after 5 seconds) your window will close because the shell has been replaced with sleep 5.

Same with your script: If you put exec something into your script, the script gets replaced with something and when that something stops execution, the whole script stops.

Simply dropping the exec bash statements should do.

Solution 2:

From help exec:

exec: exec [-cl] [-a name] [command [arguments ...]] [redirection ...]
    Replace the shell with the given command.

    Execute COMMAND, replacing this shell with the specified program.
    ARGUMENTS become the arguments to COMMAND.  If COMMAND is not specified,
    any redirections take effect in the current shell.

The key word here is replace - if you exec bash from inside a script, no further script execution can occur.