Problem 60336. Determine whether a property description closes
The arrival of summer makes me think back to the summers I spent working for my father’s engineering firm. For the first several summers I worked on land surveying crews, and a common job was to measure properties. The measurements would then be used in a metes and bounds description of the property, as in this example:
…Commencing from the point of beginning; thence N0°0ʹ0ʺE 35 m; thence N60°0ʹ0ʺE 34.64 m; thence S0°0ʹ0ʺE 52.32 m; thence S90°0ʹ0ʺW 30 m to the point of beginning.
This text describes a polygon by giving orientations and lengths of the sides.* The orientations are specified as bearings, in which angles are given as degrees, minutes, and seconds. For example, N60°0ʹ0ʺE is 60° to the east of north. The direction WSW would be written as S67°30ʹ0ʺW.
An important element of measuring and describing a property is to verify that the property, as described, closes—that is, the last side ends at the point of beginning. States in the U.S. will specify the tolerance for the closure.
Write a function to determine whether a property description closes. The input will be a character string with the bearings and distances between the points. The function should return a logical variable tf with the result as well as the distance d of the end point from the point of beginning. Take the property to close when the distance between the beginning and end points is less than 0.01 m.
*The description would also specify the location of the point of beginning and describe the property and boundaries, among other things.
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