I have a resource constrained system that contains a map and a list of points on the map given as longitude and latitude. Each point is it's own seperate object. I also have a point on the map that corresponds to the user's current location.
What I want to do is search all of the points in the map and return the one closest to the user. The long and lat are both signed doubles (language is Java but the principles should basically be the same). What would be the optimal search given that the list of points is contained in a Vector (array). I'm thinking something like a loop that goes through each item and compares the long and lat differences for the smallest differences. But that seems to me like a suboptimal solution. I have access to background threads and I do wonder about maybe 2 threads doing this, but one counting from the front of the array and another counting from the back. At present there are only a couple of hundred points, but it's possible in the future that the list might balloon to thousands. Anyways just hoping someone knows of a better search method. /* PLUG: http://plug.org, #utah on irc.freenode.net Unsubscribe: http://plug.org/mailman/options/plug Don't fear the penguin. */