Shortest Path distance between points given as X-Y coordinates
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Question
I am currently working on a project that has a vector containing X and Y coordinates for approximately 800 points. These points represent an electric network of lines. My goal is to compute the shortest distance Path between a Point A and Point B that can be or can not be located along the path given by the vectors containing the X-Y coordinates of the electric lines.
I have read about the Dijkstra Algorithm but since i am not that much familiar with it, I am not sure if I should go in that direction. I will be very thankful if I can get any feedback or comments from you that can direct me to solve this matter.
Answer
For computing the shortest path Dijakstra would be fine.
You may get faster results from using A*, which uses a best guess of the distance in order to focus its search in the right direction, thereby getting there quicker.
If you are repeatedly querying the same data set, then memoization is fine.
Those people who recommend a brute-force algorithm are fools - it's worth taking a little time to learn how to program an efficient solution. But you could calculate the shortest path between all points using the Floyd-Warshall algorithm. Unfortunately, this won't tell you what the shortest path is just how long it is.