distance()

Returns the Cartesian distance in kilometers between two geographic coordinates.

Synopsis

distance(lat1, long1, lat2, long2)

Description

This function calculates and returns the distance in kilometers between two points with the given latitude and longitude values.

Parameters

lat1

The latitude of the first coordinate.

long1

The longitude of the first coordinate.

lat2

The latitude of the second coordinate.

long2

The longitude of the second coordinate.

Returns

The decimal value of the distance in kilometers between the two points (lat1, long1) and (lat2, long2).

Examples

If there are two locations with locations <40.441331568, -80.009499962> and <40.4472914, -80.0061645>, then the distance between these two locations can be determined and stored in a user-defined variable test_distance with:

test_distance = distance(40.441331568, -80.009499962, 40.4472914, -80.0061645)

See Also

dist()