How to convert degree minute second to degree decimal

Question

I receive the latitude and longitude from GPS with this format:

Latitude : 78°55\'44.29458\"N

I need convert this data to:

latitude: 78.9288888889

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Answer 1

Here's my one liner (fine, fine – maybe it's two lines) :)

import re
lat = '''51°36'9.18"N'''
deg, minutes, seconds, direction =  re.split('[°\'"]', lat)
(float(deg) + float(minutes)/60 + float(seconds)/(60*60)) * (-1 if direction in ['W', 'S'] else 1)

This outputs 51.60255