Transfer of latitude and longitudes coordinates from one form to another

How can i change latitudes and longitudes in the following form to decimal form? Consider the coordinate (33°49'50"N 117°56'18"W) and show a simple way.

[Walter Roberson]

How are they represented? Do you have character vectors like that? If so do the character vectors include the literal ° and ' and " characters?

[Thishan Dharshana Karandana Gamalathge]

i want to basically get the above converted to form in °. For an example if we consider the city of Diamond bar, it is located at 34°0′6″N 117°49′15″W (34.001652°, -117.820761°). I want in the form shown in parenthesis.

[Walter Roberson]

Is the input like

LL1 = '33°49''50"N 117°56''18"W'
LL2 = '34°0′6″N 117°49′15″W'

(Note the two different minute characters)

Or is the input like

LL3 = {33, 49, 50, 'N', 117, 56, 18, 'W'}
LL4 = {34, 0, 6, 'N', 117, 49, 15, 'W'}

?

[Thishan Dharshana Karandana Gamalathge]

You have made it confused. Consider a geographical coordinate in degree,minutes,seconds form and convert it in to degree form. That's what I want to know.

[Walter Roberson]

To give you the code, I need to know what the existing data structure is. Do I need to break apart strings to get the pieces and convert them to numeric? Are the values already pure numeric, and if so then how is N/S and E/W signaled? Are the values in a cell array so that the characters 'N', 'S', 'E', 'W' can be examined?

Answer 1

[Walter Roberson]

lat_dms = lat_degrees + lat_minutes / 60 + lat_seconds / 3600;
if strcmpi(lat_NS, 'S'); lat_dms = -lat_dms; end

long_dms = long_degrees + long_minutes / 60 + long_seconds / 3600;
if strcmpi(long_EW, 'W'); long_dms = -long_dms; end

result = [lat_dms, long_dms]