save serial data to variable?

dimension the temporary string? you mean char temp[20]

size would be the length of the latitude/longitude (ex 4428.2011) so 9 +1 for the null

but now to get the lat variable its data would I need a for loop going from 0-9 with doing atoi until the null? and then do that from 10-20 for long?

It doesn't seem like a difficult problem (taking data that is printed out and setting a variable to it) but I just cant seem to figure it out.

This is pretty urgent, so any help would be greatly appreciated.