Minimum Distance between
a Point and a Line

This note describes the technique and gives the solution to finding the shortest distance from a point to a line or line segment. The equation of a line defined through two points P1 (x1,y1) and P2 (x2,y2) is

The point P3 (x3,y3) is closest to the line at the tangent to the line which passes through P3, that is, the dot product of the tangent and line is 0, thus

Substituting the equation of the line gives

Solving this gives the value of u

Substituting this into the equation of the line gives the point of intersection (x,y) of the tangent as

The distance therefore between the point P3 and the line is the distance between (x,y) above and P3.

• The only special testing for a software implementation is to ensure that P1 and P2 are not coincident (denominator in the equation for u is 0)

• If the distance of the point to a line segment is required then it is only necessary to test that u lies between 0 and 1.

• The solution is similar in higher dimensions.