python - extract coordinates from a variable string

Question

I have a latitude and longitude that come in a string like this:

my_string ='(31.251, -98.877)'

I would like to use Python to extract the coordinates from the above string.

The problem is that sometimes the string has variable length so one time it might look like this (31.25134, -98.877) or (31.25134, -98.877435).

So if I do something like my_string[9:15] to extract the last number (the longitude) if the first number (the latitude) is longer I capture the ')' too and that's not good.

Any idea how I might be able to extract those coordinates correctly from that string? Thank you!

Answer 1

>>> ast.literal_eval('(31.251, -98.877)')
(31.251, -98.877)

Answer 2

How about this:

mystr = '(31.251, -98.877)'

lat, lng = map(float, mystr.strip('()').split(','))

Should work without regard to the length of the values.

Answer 3

(x, y) = (float(x) for x in my_string[1:-1].split(","))