Shortest distance between two line segments

Posted by Frank on Stack Overflow See other posts from Stack Overflow or by Frank
Published on 2010-05-13T04:49:44Z Indexed on 2010/05/13 4:54 UTC
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geometry

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language-agnostic

I need a function to find the shortest distance between two line segments. A line segment is defined by two endpoints. So for example one of my line segments (AB) would be defined by the two points A (x1,y1) and B (x2,y2) and the other (CD) would be defined by the two points C (x1,y1) and D (x2,y2).

Feel free to write the solution in any language you want and I can translate it into javascript. Please keep in mind my geometry skills are pretty rusty. I have already seen http://stochastix.wordpress.com/2008/12/28/distance-between-two-lines/ and I am not sure how to translate this into a function. Thank you so much for help.

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