#Perpendicular Distance

The perpendicular distance is defined as the shortest distance between a point a line (in the two-dimensional plane) respectively between a point and a great circle on a spherical surface.

With phpgeo it is possible to calculate the perpendicular distance between a point (instance of the Coordinate class) and a Great Circle - which is defined by a Line. A line is defined by a pair of coordinates.

The distance between points P and X is the perpendicular distance in the following sketch:

#Example

<?php

use Location\Coordinate;
use Location\Line;
use Location\Utility\PerpendicularDistance;

$point = new Coordinate(52.44468, 13.57455);
$line = new Line(
    new Coordinate(52.4554, 13.5582),
    new Coordinate(52.4371, 13.5623)
);

$pdCalc = new PerpendicularDistance();

printf(
    "perpendicular distance: %.1f meters\n",
    $pdCalc->getPerpendicularDistance($point, $line)
);

The code above will produce the output below:

perpendicular distance: 936.7 meters