Newsgroups: comp.graphics
Path: utzoo!utgpu!radio.astro!brian
From: brian@radio.astro.utoronto.ca (Brian Glendenning)
Subject: Closest pairs of points
Message-ID: <BRIAN.89Nov14161727@radio.astro.utoronto.ca>
Sender: brian@radio.astro.utoronto.ca (Brian Glendenning)
Organization: Radio Astronomy, Univeristy of Toronto
Date: Tue, 14 Nov 89 21:17:38 GMT


I don't actually want this for a graphics application, but people who
code graphics applications might have done similar things in the past.

Does anyone have a nice algorithm for finding the closest pairs of a
set of points distributed in 2 or 3 space? That is, from the set of
points (xi,yi,zi) i=1..N (say N is even), determine the pairs:

(x1j,y1j,z1j; x2j,y2j,z2j) j=1..N/2 where R1 <= R2 <= R3 ... <= RN/2

where the R's are the normal euclidean separation between the points
in a given pair.

Each point may be a member of only one pair. The algorithms I can
think up seem to be either clunky or too slow (~10^5 points). Thanks!
--
	  Brian Glendenning - Radio astronomy, University of Toronto
brian@radio.astro.utoronto.ca uunet!utai!radio!brian  glendenn@utorphys.bitnet
-- 
	  Brian Glendenning - Radio astronomy, University of Toronto
brian@radio.astro.utoronto.ca uunet!utai!radio!brian  glendenn@utorphys.bitnet
