Inner angle between two lines

Question

I have two lines: Line1 and Line2. Each line is defined by two points (P1L1(x1, y1), P2L1(x2, y2) and P1L1(x1, y1), P2L3(x2, y3)). I want to know the inner angle defined by these two lines.

For do it I calculate the angle of each line with the abscissa:

double theta1 = atan(m1) * (180.0 / PI);
double theta2 = atan(m2) * (180.0 / PI);

After to know the angle I calculate the following:

double angle = abs(theta2 - theta1);

The problem or doubt that I have is: sometimes I get the correct angle but sometimes I get the complementary angle (for me outer). How can I know when subtract 180º to know the inner angle? There is any algorithm better to do that? Because I tried some methods: dot product, following formula:

result = (m1 - m2) / (1.0 + (m1 * m2));

But always I have the same problem; I never known when I have the outer angle or the inner angle!

Answer 1

The whole point is much easier than the given answers:

When you use atan(slope) you lose (literally) one bit of information, that is there are exactly two angles (theta) and (theta+PI) in the range (0..2*PI), which give the same value for the function tan().

Just use atan2(deltax, deltay) and you get the right angle. For instance

atan2(1,1) == PI/4
atan2(-1,-1) == 5*PI/4

Then subtract, take absolute value, and if greater than PI subtract from 2*PI.

Answer 2

I think what you're looking for is the inner product (you may also want to look over the dot product entry) of the two angles. In your case, that's given by:

float dx21 = x2-x1;
float dx31 = x3-x1;
float dy21 = y2-y1;
float dy31 = y3-y1;
float m12 = sqrt( dx21*dx21 + dy21*dy21 );
float m13 = sqrt( dx31*dx31 + dy31*dy31 );
float theta = acos( (dx21*dx31 + dy21*dy31) / (m12 * m13) );

Answer is in radians.

EDIT: Here's a complete implementation. Substitute the problematic values in p1, p2, and p3 and let me know what you get. The point p1 is the vertex where the two lines intersect, in accordance with your definition of the two lines.

#include <math.h>
#include <iostream>

template <typename T> class Vector2D
{
private:
    T x;
    T y;

public:
    explicit Vector2D(const T& x=0, const T& y=0) : x(x), y(y) {}
    Vector2D(const Vector2D<T>& src) : x(src.x), y(src.y) {}
    virtual ~Vector2D() {}

    // Accessors
    inline T X() const { return x; }
    inline T Y() const { return y; }
    inline T X(const T& x) { this->x = x; }
    inline T Y(const T& y) { this->y = y; }

    // Vector arithmetic
    inline Vector2D<T> operator-() const
        { return Vector2D<T>(-x, -y); }

    inline Vector2D<T> operator+() const
        { return Vector2D<T>(+x, +y); }

    inline Vector2D<T> operator+(const Vector2D<T>& v) const
        { return Vector2D<T>(x+v.x, y+v.y); }

    inline Vector2D<T> operator-(const Vector2D<T>& v) const
        { return Vector2D<T>(x-v.x, y-v.y); }

    inline Vector2D<T> operator*(const T& s) const
        { return Vector2D<T>(x*s, y*s); }

    // Dot product
    inline T operator*(const Vector2D<T>& v) const
        { return x*v.x + y*v.y; }

    // l-2 norm
    inline T norm() const { return sqrt(x*x + y*y); }

    // inner angle (radians)
    static T angle(const Vector2D<T>& v1, const Vector2D<T>& v2)
    {
        return acos( (v1 * v2) / (v1.norm() * v2.norm()) );
    }
};

int main()
{
    Vector2D<double> p1(215, 294);
    Vector2D<double> p2(174, 228);
    Vector2D<double> p3(303, 294);

    double rad = Vector2D<double>::angle(p2-p1, p3-p1);
    double deg = rad * 180.0 / M_PI;

    std::cout << "rad = " << rad << "\tdeg = " << deg << std::endl;

    p1 = Vector2D<double>(153, 457);
    p2 = Vector2D<double>(19, 457);
    p3 = Vector2D<double>(15, 470);

    rad = Vector2D<double>::angle(p2-p1, p3-p1);
    deg = rad * 180.0 / M_PI;

    std::cout << "rad = " << rad << "\tdeg = " << deg << std::endl;

    return 0;
}

The code above yields:

rad = 2.12667   deg = 121.849
rad = 0.0939257 deg = 5.38155