Field Calculate Degree Minute Second in Different Format?

Question

I have a field that is in degree minutes seconds, populated from ET Geowizards COGO Inverse tool. It populates the values as 90-12-28.15 where 90 is the degree, 12 is the minutes and 28.15 is the seconds.

I need to use this field to label on a map. The format of the label is calling for the degree minutes seconds characters (i.e. 90° 12' 28.15") so I want to add a new field and use VB/Python to field calculate these characters in and remove the dashes.

Answer 1

The following Python field calculation script should work for you (tested in ArcMap 10.0):

Your expression should be:

calc(!YOUR_FIELD_NAME_HERE!)

And your code block should be:

def calc(val):
    val = val.split('-')
    return u'%s\u00B0 %s\u2032 %s\u2033' % tuple(val)

The \uXXXX characters are special unicode characters for °, ′, and ″ (thanks to Mike Toews)