Using 'Replace' Function in Python

Question

I have an access table that has a bunch coordinate values in degrees minutes seconds and they are formatted like this:

90-12-28.15

I want to reformat it like this:

90° 12' 28.15"

essentially replacing the dashes with the degrees minutes and seconds characters and a space between the degrees and minutes and another one between the minutes and seconds.

I'm thinking about using the 'Replace' function, but I'm not sure how to replace the first instance of the dash with a degree character (°) and space and then detect the second instance of the dash and place the minute characters and a space and then finally adding the seconds character at the end.

Any help is appreciated.

Mike

kindall · Accepted Answer · 2012-08-01 22:49:27Z

5

While regular expressions and split() are fine solutions, doing this with replace() is rather easy.

lat = "90-12-28.15"

lat = lat.replace("-", "° ", 1)
lat = lat.replace("-", "' ", 1)
lat = lat + '"'

Or you can do it all on one line:

lat = lat.replace("-", "° ", 1).replace("-", "' ", 1) + '"'

answered Aug 1, 2012 at 22:49

kindall

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1 Comment

Michael0x2a Over a year ago

Cool, I didn't know you could do that.

mrok · Accepted Answer · 2012-08-01 22:44:40Z

2

I would just split your first string:

# -*- coding: utf-8 -*-

str = '90-12-28.15'

arr = str.split('-')   
str2 = arr[0] +'° ' + arr[1] + '\'' +arr[2] +'"'

print str2

answered Aug 1, 2012 at 22:44

mrok

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Comments

jfs · Accepted Answer · 2012-08-01 23:23:34Z

1

You might want to use Python's regular expressions module re, particularly re.sub(). Check the Python docs here for more information.

If you're not familiar with regular expressions, check out this tutorial here, also from the Python documentation.

import re

text = 'replace "-" in 90-12-28.15'
print(re.sub(r'(\d\d)-(\d\d)-(\d\d)\.(\d\d)', r'''\1° \2' \3.\4"''', text))
# use \d{1,2} instead of \d\d if single digits are allowed

edited Aug 1, 2012 at 23:23

jfs

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answered Aug 1, 2012 at 22:40

Amit

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Comments

marianobianchi · Accepted Answer · 2012-08-01 22:50:50Z

0

The python "replace" string method should be easy to use. You can find the documentation here.

In your case, you can do something like this:

my_str = "90-12-28.15"
my_str = my_str.replace("-","°",1)# 1 means you are going to replace the first ocurrence only
my_str = my_str.replace("-","'",1)
my_str = my_str + "\""

answered Aug 1, 2012 at 22:50

marianobianchi

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1 Comment

DryLabRebel Over a year ago

The link you provided has no information on the replace method that I could find. The actual information is in the link on that page at the top String Methods which takes you here.

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