get closest point to a line

Question

I\'d like to have a straight forward C# function to get a closest point (from a point P) to a line-segment, AB. An abstract function may look like this. I\'ve search through

Answer 1

The answer from Justin L. is almost fine, but it doesn't check if the normalized distance is less than 0, or higher than the AB vector magnitude. Then it won't work well when P vector proyection is out of bounds (from the line segment AB). Here's the corrected pseudocode:

    function GetClosestPoint(A, B, P)
{
  vectorAP = (p.x - a.x, p.y - a.y)     //Vector from A to P
  vectorAB = (b.x - a.x, b.y - a.y)     //Vector from A to B

  magnitudeAB = vectorAB[0]^2 + vectorAB[1]^2  
  //Magnitude of AB vector (it's length)


  ABAPproduct = vectorAB[0]*vectorAP[0] + vectorAB[1]*vectorAP[1] 
  //The product of a_to_p and a_to_b


  distance = ABAPproduct / magnitudeAB       
  //The normalized "distance" from a to your closest point

  if ( distance < 0)     //Check if P projection is over vectorAB
    {
        returnPoint.x = a.x
        returnPoint.y = a.y
    }   
  else if (distance > magnitudeAB)
    {
        returnPoint.x = b.x
        returnPoint.y = b.y
    }
  else
    {
        returnPoint.x = a.x + vectorAB[0]*distance
        returnPoint.y = a.y + vectorAB[1]*distance
    }

}