Dear R-sig-geo users, I was wondering if there is a pre-written R function that calculates the minimum distance from a point to SpatialLines objects.
I have a european railroad shapefile which I read into R: > class(railroad) [1] "SpatialLinesDataFrame" attr(,"package") [1] "sp" > names(railroad) [1] "LENGTH" "TYPE" "LEVEL" "NAME" "NATION" "CNTRYNAME" "TUNNEL" "FLOOR" "TONNAGE" > slotNames(railroad) [1] "data" "lines" "bbox" "proj4string" Using this data, I would like to search for the minimum distance from an arbitrary point to the railroads nearby. I could write a function that generates points along the line from coordinates given for each railroad segment as shown below: > [EMAIL PROTECTED]@Lines [[1]] An object of class "Line" Slot "coords": [,1] [,2] [1,] 8.3613 46.5359 [2,] 8.3603 46.5360 [3,] 8.3590 46.5361 [4,] 8.3578 46.5364 [5,] 8.3567 46.5365 [6,] 8.3555 46.5364 [7,] 8.3538 46.5361 [8,] 8.3524 46.5361 and find the minimum distances from a point to these multiple points. But I would like to if there is a more intelligent way to calculate this. I've looked into the r-sig-geo archive and the only thing I found was finding the minimum distance using some type of GIS software. Thank you very much for your help in advance. Harry _______________________________________________ R-sig-Geo mailing list R-sig-Geo@stat.math.ethz.ch https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-sig-geo