I take it you have the data in character form. If the DMS data is already in a data frame it is probably in factor form, so you will need to coerce it to character first. Here is how you could do it with the DMS data in a data frame:
> m ## an example with 3 entries DMS 1 122:45:45 2 122:45:45 3 122:45:45 > m <- within(m, { + dms <- do.call(rbind, strsplit(as.character(DMS), ":")) + dec <- as.numeric(dms[,1]) + + (as.numeric(dms[,2]) + as.numeric(dms[,3])/60)/60 + rm(dms) + }) > m DMS dec 1 122:45:45 122.7625 2 122:45:45 122.7625 3 122:45:45 122.7625 > m$dec is thhen the required decimal degrees. Bill Venables. -----Original Message----- From: r-help-boun...@r-project.org [mailto:r-help-boun...@r-project.org] On Behalf Of Sadz A Sent: Tuesday, 17 August 2010 9:28 AM To: r-help@r-project.org Subject: [R] Converting degree: minute: second data to decimal degree data, should be simple Hi All, I have location data set up as degrees: minutes: seconds (for example, 122:45:45) I need to get this data into decimal degree form (122.7625). I know that I need to use the formula Decimal degrees = Degrees + (Minutes/60) + (Seconds/3600) Does anyone know how I can get R to do this? The original data is all in one column (called 'lat') and the degrees, mins and secs are divided by ':' There are some values that are negative (eg -69:38:27) I have R version 2.10.1 on a windows vista computer. I could do it manually but I have like 20,000 entries and would really like a little code to automate the conversion. I have tried Microsoft Access and Excel, but because the data is not stored in 3 columns I cannot get it to work, I figured R was my best option but I cant get it to work. It should be really simple but I'm new to R so would really appreciate help. Thank you for reading my plea, Any and all help is greatly appreciated, sadz [[alternative HTML version deleted]] ______________________________________________ R-help@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code. ______________________________________________ R-help@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.