Shortest distance between a point and a line segment

Posted by Eli Courtwright on Stack Overflow See other posts from Stack Overflow or by Eli Courtwright
Published on 2009-05-11T17:47:52Z Indexed on 2012/09/06 3:38 UTC
Read the original article Hit count: 245

Filed under:

language-agnostic

|

geometry

I need a basic function to find the shortest distance between a point and a line segment. Feel free to write the solution in any language you want; I can translate it into what I'm using (Javascript).

EDIT: My line segment is defined by two endpoints. So my line segment AB is defined by the two points A (x1,y1) and B (x2,y2). I'm trying to find the distance between this line segment and a point C (x3,y3). My geometry skills are rusty, so the examples I've seen are confusing, I'm sorry to admit.

© Stack Overflow or respective owner

Related posts about language-agnostic

Are there any language agnostic unit testing frameworks?

as seen on Programmers - Search for 'Programmers'
I have always been skeptical of rewriting working code - porting code is no exception to this. However, with the advent of TDD and automated testing it is much more reasonable to rewrite and refactor code. Does anyone know if there is a TDD tool that can be used for porting old code? Ideally you… >>> More
Language Agnostic Basic Programming Question

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
This is very basic question from programming point of view but as I am in learning phase, I thought I would better ask this question rather than having a misunderstanding or narrow knowledge about the topic. So do excuse me if somehow I mess it up. Question: Let's say I have class A,B,C and D… >>> More
Language-agnostic term for typed things that need memory

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
Is there an accepted general term that subsumes the concepts of variables, class instances and arrays? Basically "any typed thing that needs memory". In C++, such a thing is called an object, but I'm looking for a more language-agnostic term. § 1.8 The C++ object model 1 The constructs in… >>> More
Deprecated Methods in Code Base

as seen on Programmers - Search for 'Programmers'
A lot of the code I've been working on recently, both professionally (read: at work) and in other spheres (read: at home, for friends/family/etc, or NOT FOR WORK), has been worked on, redesigned and re-implemented several times - where possible/required. This has been in an effort to make things smaller… >>> More
Coding Competition, language agnostic guidelines?

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
Hi there: I might be doing a coding competition soon, I was wondering if anyone made one and what where the guidelines/ process. I'd like to make the competition appealing to all devs, and I m trying to come up with ideas as to how. the scenario is: There is an event running and we(of the coding… >>> More

Related posts about geometry

GLSL check if fragment is on geometry

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
I am currently writing the positions of my geometry to the RGB channels of gl_FragColor and I would like to write 1.0 to the alpha channel if the fragment is part of geometry, and 0.0 if its empty. Is there a simple way to tell if a fragment is geometry or not? Maybe through gl_FragCoord.z? thanks >>> More
In JTS, when I do geometry.buffer(1).buffer(-1), will the resulting geometry be equivalent to the or

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
I was having problems while intersecting two geometries, getting a TopologyException probably due to a rounding error during the operation, then I read this fix and tried a buffer(0) on both input geometries, but still without success. Then I tried geo.buffer(1).buffer(-1) and it worked. Will these… >>> More
Multiple mesh with one geometry and diferent textures. Error

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
I have a loop where I create a multiple Mesh with different geometry, because each mesh has one texture: .... var geoCube = new THREE.CubeGeometry(voxelSize, voxelSize, voxelSize); var geometry = new THREE.Geometry(); for( var i = 0; i < voxels.length; i++ ){ var voxel = voxels[i]; var object; … >>> More
How to read verbose VC++ linker output

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
Trying to debug some linker errors, I turned on /VERBOSE and I'm trying to make sense of the output. It occurs to me that I really don't know how to read it. For example: 1>Compiling version info 1>Linking... 1>Starting pass 1 1>Processed /DEFAULTLIB:mfc80.lib 1>Processed /DEFAULTLIB:mfcs80… >>> More
Drawing a rectangular prism using opengl

as seen on Game Development - Search for 'Game Development'
I'm trying to learn opengl. I did some code for building a rectangular prism. I don't want to draw back faces so I used glCullFace(GL_BACK), glEnable(GL_CULL_FACE);. But I keep getting back faces also when viewing from front and also sometimes when rotating sides are vanishing. Can someone point me… >>> More