Split by Character/Separator


Creating a sample dataframe

LatLong <- c("40.841885, -73.856621",
             "40.675026, -73.944855", 
             "40.726253, -73.806710",
             "40.725375, -73.789845", 
             "40.845456, -73.876555")
Location <- c("Bronx", "Brooklyn", 
              "Manhattan", "Queens", "Staten Island")
geoData <- data.frame(LatLong, Location)
geoData

##                 LatLong      Location
## 1 40.841885, -73.856621         Bronx
## 2 40.675026, -73.944855      Brooklyn
## 3 40.726253, -73.806710     Manhattan
## 4 40.725375, -73.789845        Queens
## 5 40.845456, -73.876555 Staten Island


Separating LatLong

class(geoData$LatLong)

## [1] "factor"

geoData$LatLong <- as.character(geoData$LatLong)
dat <- strsplit(geoData$LatLong, ",")
Lat <- vector("character", length(dat))
Long <- vector("character", length(dat))
for (i in 1:length(dat))
{
  Lat[i] <- dat[[i]][1]
  Long[i] <- dat[[i]][2]
}

geoData2 <- data.frame(cbind(Lat, Long, Location))
geoData2

##         Lat        Long      Location
## 1 40.841885  -73.856621         Bronx
## 2 40.675026  -73.944855      Brooklyn
## 3 40.726253  -73.806710     Manhattan
## 4 40.725375  -73.789845        Queens
## 5 40.845456  -73.876555 Staten Island