How to vectorize finding the closest point out of a vector

Question

BigList = rand(20, 3)
LittleList = rand(5, 3)

I\'d like to find for each row in the big list the \'closest\' row in the little list, as defined by

Answer 1

You can do it with bsxfun:

d = squeeze(sum((bsxfun(@minus, BigList, permute(LittleList, [3 2 1]))).^2, 2));
[~, ind] = min(d,[],2);