Shell loops using non-integers?

Question

I wrote a .sh file to compile and run a few programs for a homework assignment. I have a \"for\" loop in the script, but it won\'t work unless I use only integers:

Answer 1

The easiest way is to just list them:

for a in 1.2 3.4 3.11 402.12 4.2 2342.40
do
  ./hw3_2_2 $a
done

If the list is huge, so you can't have it as a literal list, consider dumping it in a file and then using something like

for a in $(< my-numbers.txt)
do
  ./hw3_2_2 $a
done

The $(< my-numbers.txt) part is an efficient way (in Bash) to substitute the contents of the names file in that location of the script. Thanks to Dennis Williamson for pointing out that there is no need to use the external cat command for this.