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 (eg, 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 think in these 
instances I need to do the calculation in the positive then multiply it by -1 to 
make it negative again, the only problem is the positive and negative data are 
all intermingled, is there a way around this too?
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, 
Please contact me if you need any more details
Any and all help is greatly appreciated,
sadz 



      
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