I am writing a script where I need to check if a decimal number is higher than another given decimal number using an if statement.

I have the if setup so far as:

if [ $<dec. num> -lt 0.02 ]; then
...
..
fi

since the "-lt" operator only does integer I get an error that looks like this:

[: .000066041946411: integer expression expected

my second idea is that I should multiply the first number by a thousand and then round it off to create an integer. I googled "round decimal" and I get nothing productive.

Can someone help me either compare the decimal number or tell me how I round a decimal? I am guessing that rounding the decimal has something to do with the "bc" command.

You could use the arbitrary precision calculator bc if it is installed on the system. It accepts equations like 1.2 < 1.3 and outputs 1 for true or 0 for false. e.g:
bc -q starts bc without a welcome message.

You can echo expressions to bc from a script and receive the output:
gives the result 0. Thus you can include piped input (as above) as part of a script.
(in Perl):
Sorry, I don't do much bash scripting, but the principle is the same.

I tried what you put and it worked. Thank you so much!!