How to calculate distance between two rectangles? (Context: a game in Lua.)

Question

Given two rectangles with x, y, width, height in pixels and a rotation value in degrees -- how do I calculate the closest distance of their outlines toward each other?

Answer 1

Please check this for Java, it has the constraint all rectangles are parallel, it returns 0 for all intersecting rectangles:

   public static double findClosest(Rectangle rec1, Rectangle rec2) {
      double x1, x2, y1, y2;
      double w, h;
      if (rec1.x > rec2.x) {
         x1 = rec2.x; w = rec2.width; x2 = rec1.x;
      } else {
         x1 = rec1.x; w = rec1.width; x2 = rec2.x;
      }
      if (rec1.y > rec2.y) {
         y1 = rec2.y; h = rec2.height; y2 = rec1.y;
      } else {
         y1 = rec1.y; h = rec1.height; y2 = rec2.y;
      }
      double a = Math.max(0, x2 - x1 - w);
      double b = Math.max(0, y2 - y1 - h);
      return Math.sqrt(a*a+b*b);
   }