Parsing string with double and single quotes

[joecolson]

I've been trying to devise a JavaScript function that will take a GPS latitude or longitude coordinate expressed as degrees, minutes and seconds, and convert it to decimal degrees. Once the expression is parsed, I've got no problems. My problem lies in converting a string like this:

110"57'9.62532

into its constituent parts, degrees, minutes and seconds. Since the string has an embedded double quote and an embedded single quote, my attempts to parse the string error out. I've searched the Web and this forum for a solution, to no avail. Can anyone suggest a solution? Thanks in advance for your help.

[pbmods]

Heya, Joe. Welcome to TSDN!

This problem is right up the alley of Regular Expressions.

[joecolson]

Thanks. That helps because it tells me I was on the right track. But as an inexperienced JavaScript programmer, I'm still lost. Any more direction that you can provide would be appreciated. In fact, give me an example to speed my learning.

[pbmods]

Heya, Joe.

No problem. The idea is that regular expressions are fantastic at describing strings.

So in the case of:
110"57'9.62532

We have:

• a bunch of numbers
• "
• a bunch of numbers
• '
• a bunch of numbers with a '.' in the middle

Expressed as a regexp, we have:

alert( str.match(/^(\d+)"(\d+)'(\d+\.\d+)$/) );
 

[joecolson]

That helps a lot. Thanks for getting me on the right track.