Converting geo coordinates from degree to decimal

Question

I want to convert my geographic coordinates from degrees to decimals, my data are as follows:

         lat     long
105252 30°25.264 9°01.331
105253 30°39.23         


        

Answer 1

Use the measurements package from CRAN which has a unit conversion function already so you don't need to make your own:

x = read.table(text = "
   lat     long
105252 30°25.264 9°01.331
105253 30°39.237 8°10.811
105255 31°37.760 8°06.040
105258 31°41.190 8°06.557
105259 31°41.229 8°06.622
105260 31°38.891 8°06.281",
header = TRUE, stringsAsFactors = FALSE)

Once your data.frame is set up then:

# change the degree symbol to a space
x$lat = gsub('°', ' ', x$lat)
x$long = gsub('°', ' ', x$long)

# convert from decimal minutes to decimal degrees
x$lat = measurements::conv_unit(x$lat, from = 'deg_dec_min', to = 'dec_deg')
x$long = measurements::conv_unit(x$long, from = 'deg_dec_min', to = 'dec_deg')

Resulting in the end product:

                    lat             long
105252 30.4210666666667 9.02218333333333
105253         30.65395 8.18018333333333
105255 31.6293333333333 8.10066666666667
105258          31.6865 8.10928333333333
105259         31.68715 8.11036666666667
105260 31.6481833333333 8.10468333333333