Distance formula between two points in a list

Question

I need to take a list I have created and find the closest two points and print them out. How can I go about comparing each point in the list?

There isn\'t any need to pl

Answer 1

Your fixed code. No efficient algorithm, just the brute force one.

import math # math needed for sqrt

# distance function
def dist(p1, p2):
    return math.sqrt((p2[0] - p1[0]) ** 2 + (p2[1] - p1[1]) ** 2)

# run through input and reorder in [(x, y), (x,y) ...] format
input = ["9.5 7.5", "10.2 19.1", "9.7 10.2"] # original input list (entered by spacing the two points)
points = [map(float, point.split()) for point in input] # final list

# http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Closest_pair_of_points
mindist = float("inf")
for p1, p2 in itertools.combinations(points, 2):
    if dist(p1, p2) < mindist:
        mindist = dist(p1, p2)
        closestpair = (p1, p2)

print(closestpair)