dms to decimal degree

## Function if coordinates are ever in degree minutes seconds
# angle input can read these formats
# 00º 00" 00
# 00 00 00
# 00º00"00

angle2dec <- function(angle) {
  angle <- as.character(angle)
  
  if (sum(str_detect(angle, '\\s*[:upper:]$')+0) > 0) {
    angle <- str_remove(angle, '\\s*[:upper:]$')
    warning("You passed coordinates containing N, E, S, or W. Stringr may have accounted for it but double check your outputs")
  }
  
  # use punctuation marks and symbols that aren't decimal points to split degrees minutes seconds apart
  x <- do.call(rbind, str_split(angle, '[^\\d\\.]'))
  if (ncol(x) == 3) {
    x <- apply(x, 1L, function(y) {
    y <- as.numeric(y)
    y[1] + y[2]/60 + y[3]/3600
  })
  } else {
    x <- apply(x, 1L, function(y) {
      y <- as.numeric(y)
      y[1] + y[2]/60
    })
  }
  return(x)
}

The ropensci/parzer package offers this functionality and it also checks if there is a W or S in the string to give negative numeric decimal coordinate and it automatically detects and supports many special characters for the splitting, not only .

ah good point! I haven't used this in a while.