Converting a string into a float that includes the negative

[phamtony33 at gmail.com]

On Saturday, November 7, 2015 at 9:40:49 PM UTC-5, MRAB wrote:
> On 2015-11-08 02:11, phamtony33 at gmail.com wrote:
> > I am having issue with converting the string into a float because there is a negative, so only end up with "ValueError: invalid literal for float(): 81.4]"
> >
> > def contains_words(word,msg):
> > 	if word in msg:
> > 		return true
> > 	else:
> > 		return false
> > 		
> > def get_tweet(tweet_line):
> > 	part_list = tweet_line.split('\t')
> > 	tweet = part_list[3]
> > 	return tweet
> >
> > def get_longitude(tweet_line):
> > 	part_list = tweet_line.split('\t')
> > 	gps = part_list[0]
> > 	gps_list = gps.split(', ')
> > 	long = gps_list[1]
> > 	long1 = long[1:]
> > 	longitude = float(long1)
> > 	return longitude
> >
> > a = get_longitude("[41.3, -81.4]\t6\t2011-08-28 19:02:28\tyay. little league world series!")
> > print a
> >
> > the answer should be
> > get_longitude("[41.3, -81.4]\t6\t2011-08-28 19:02:28\tyay. little league world series!") → -81.4
> >
> You're slicing the wrong end off 'long'.
> 
> You have '-81.4]'. You want '-81.4'. You should be doing long[ : -1].

Ah! Thank you so much!