R: Get the nearest point on a segment to a given point

nearestPointOnSegment {maptools} | R Documentation

## Get the nearest point on a segment to a given point

### Description

This function calculates the coordinates of and the distance to the nearest point on a segment to a given point. This function does not work with geographic coordinates.

### Usage

    nearestPointOnSegment(s, p)

### Arguments

`s` | A matrix representing the coordinates of the segment. The matrix has 2x2 dimension where each row represents one of the end points.
`p` | A vector representing the X and Y coordinates of the point.

### Value

A vector with three numeric values representing X and Y coordinates of the nearest point on a segment to a given point as well as the distance between both points.

### Author(s)

German Carrillo

### References

The function was ported to R based on this code: http://pastebin.com/n9rUuGRh

### See Also

`nearestPointOnLine`, `snapPointsToLines`

### Examples

    segment = cbind(c(1,2),c(1,1.5))
    point = c(1.2,1.5)
    nearestPointOnSegment(segment, point)

[Package maptools version 0.9-9 Index]