How can you determine a point is between two other

Question

Let's say you have a two dimensional plane with 2 points (called a and b) on it represented by an x integer and a y integer for each point.

How can you determine if another point c is on the line segment defined by a and b?

I use python most, but examples in any language would be helpful.

Answer 1

Here's how I'd do it:

def distance(a,b):
    return sqrt((a.x - b.x)**2 + (a.y - b.y)**2)

def is_between(a,c,b):
    return distance(a,c) + distance(c,b) == distance(a,b)

Answer 2

Ok, lots of mentions of linear algebra (cross product of vectors) and this works in a real (ie continuous or floating point) space but the question specifically stated that the two points were expressed as integers and thus a cross product is not the correct solution although it can give an approximate solution.

The correct solution is to use Bresenham's Line Algorithm between the two points and to see if the third point is one of the points on the line. If the points are sufficiently distant that calculating the algorithm is non-performant (and it'd have to be really large for that to be the case) I'm sure you could dig around and find optimisations.

Answer 3

c# From http://www.faqs.org/faqs/graphics/algorithms-faq/ -> Subject 1.02: How do I find the distance from a point to a line?

Boolean Contains(PointF from, PointF to, PointF pt, double epsilon)
        {

            double segmentLengthSqr = (to.X - from.X) * (to.X - from.X) + (to.Y - from.Y) * (to.Y - from.Y);
            double r = ((pt.X - from.X) * (to.X - from.X) + (pt.Y - from.Y) * (to.Y - from.Y)) / segmentLengthSqr;
            if(r<0 || r>1) return false;
            double sl = ((from.Y - pt.Y) * (to.X - from.X) - (from.X - pt.X) * (to.Y - from.Y)) / System.Math.Sqrt(segmentLengthSqr);
            return -epsilon <= sl && sl <= epsilon;
        }

Answer 4

An answer in C# using a Vector2D class

public static bool IsOnSegment(this Segment2D @this, Point2D c, double tolerance)
{
     var distanceSquared = tolerance*tolerance;
     // Start of segment to test point vector
     var v = new Vector2D( @this.P0, c ).To3D();
     // Segment vector
     var s = new Vector2D( @this.P0, @this.P1 ).To3D();
     // Dot product of s
     var ss = s*s;
     // k is the scalar we multiply s by to get the projection of c onto s
     // where we assume s is an infinte line
     var k = v*s/ss;
     // Convert our tolerance to the units of the scalar quanity k
     var kd = tolerance / Math.Sqrt( ss );
     // Check that the projection is within the bounds
     if (k <= -kd || k >= (1+kd))
     {
        return false;
     }
     // Find the projection point
     var p = k*s;
     // Find the vector between test point and it's projection
     var vp = (v - p);
     // Check the distance is within tolerance.
     return vp * vp < distanceSquared;
}

Note that

s * s

is the dot product of the segment vector via operator overloading in C#

The key is taking advantage of the projection of the point onto the infinite line and observing that the scalar quantity of the projection tells us trivially if the projection is on the segment or not. We can adjust the bounds of the scalar quantity to use a fuzzy tolerance.

If the projection is within bounds we just test if the distance from the point to the projection is within bounds.

The benefit over the cross product approach is that the tolerance has a meaningful value.

Answer 5

Here's a different way to go about it, with code given in C++. Given two points, l1 and l2 it's trivial to express the line segment between them as

l1 + A(l2 - l1)

where 0 <= A <= 1. This is known as the vector representation of a line if you're interested any more beyond just using it for this problem. We can split out the x and y components of this, giving:

x = l1.x + A(l2.x - l1.x)
y = l1.y + A(l2.y - l1.y)

Take a point (x, y) and substitute its x and y components into these two expressions to solve for A. The point is on the line if the solutions for A in both expressions are equal and 0 <= A <= 1. Because solving for A requires division, there's special cases that need handling to stop division by zero when the line segment is horizontal or vertical. The final solution is as follows:

// Vec2 is a simple x/y struct - it could very well be named Point for this use

bool isBetween(double a, double b, double c) {
    // return if c is between a and b
    double larger = (a >= b) ? a : b;
    double smaller = (a != larger) ? a : b;

    return c <= larger && c >= smaller;
}

bool pointOnLine(Vec2<double> p, Vec2<double> l1, Vec2<double> l2) {
    if(l2.x - l1.x == 0) return isBetween(l1.y, l2.y, p.y); // vertical line
    if(l2.y - l1.y == 0) return isBetween(l1.x, l2.x, p.x); // horizontal line

    double Ax = (p.x - l1.x) / (l2.x - l1.x);
    double Ay = (p.y - l1.y) / (l2.y - l1.y);

    // We want Ax == Ay, so check if the difference is very small (floating
    // point comparison is fun!)

    return fabs(Ax - Ay) < 0.000001 && Ax >= 0.0 && Ax <= 1.0;
}

Answer 6

The length of the segment is not important, thus using a square root is not required and should be avoided since we could lose some precision.

class Point:
    def __init__(self, x, y):
        self.x = x
        self.y = y

class Segment:
    def __init__(self, a, b):
        self.a = a
        self.b = b

    def is_between(self, c):
        # Check if slope of a to c is the same as a to b ;
        # that is, when moving from a.x to c.x, c.y must be proportionally
        # increased than it takes to get from a.x to b.x .

        # Then, c.x must be between a.x and b.x, and c.y must be between a.y and b.y.
        # => c is after a and before b, or the opposite
        # that is, the absolute value of cmp(a, b) + cmp(b, c) is either 0 ( 1 + -1 )
        #    or 1 ( c == a or c == b)

        a, b = self.a, self.b             

        return ((b.x - a.x) * (c.y - a.y) == (c.x - a.x) * (b.y - a.y) and 
                abs(cmp(a.x, c.x) + cmp(b.x, c.x)) <= 1 and
                abs(cmp(a.y, c.y) + cmp(b.y, c.y)) <= 1)

Some random example of usage :

a = Point(0,0)
b = Point(50,100)
c = Point(25,50)
d = Point(0,8)

print Segment(a,b).is_between(c)
print Segment(a,b).is_between(d)