LineInt is a simple geometry tool to calculate the intersection of two lines in two-dimensional space. Each line is defined by two points. This is hardly a difficult math problem, but you can eat up a lot of time and make errors working out a set of intersections with pencil and calculator.
The code was based on an article in Graphics Gems, describing the best way to calculate the intersection - with the fewest number of operations. You might find the code in xsect.pas interesting. The solution requires a minimum of 9 additions or subtractions, 10 multiplications and 2 divisions for a total of 21 floating point calculations. Can you beat this?
Paul Bourke has a web page that explains it all.
The Geometric Tools web site has lots of background material on intersections of various geometrical entities. Look under 'Documentation'. There is a lot of good info at this site from Dave Eberly.
The usage is supposed to be self-evident. Fill in the blanks and press "Compute". When you are done, press Quit. You get an error message if you input parallel lines or try to define a line with two identical points.
{ xsect.pas} { The procedure in lineint was inspired by the routine xlines.c by Mukesh Prasad in Graphics Gems II. However, the PDAS version looks for an intersection of the two infinite lines rather than the line segments } PROCEDURE LinesIntersect(const x1,y1,x2,y2: EXTENDED; { first line} const x3,y3,x4,y4: EXTENDED; { second line } VAR code : INTEGER; { =0 OK; =1 lines parallel} VAR x,y : EXTENDED); { intersection point } VAR a1, a2, b1, b2, c1, c2 : EXTENDED; { Coefficients of line eqns.} denom : EXTENDED; BEGIN a1:= y2-y1; b1:= x1-x2; c1:= x2*y1 - x1*y2; { a1*x + b1*y + c1 = 0 is line 1 } a2:= y4-y3; b2:= x3-x4; c2:= x4*y3 - x3*y4; { a2*x + b2*y + c2 = 0 is line 2 } denom:= a1*b2 - a2*b1; IF denom = 0 THEN BEGIN code:=1; EXIT END; x:=(b1*c2 - b2*c1)/denom; y:=(a2*c1 - a1*c2)/denom; code:=0 END; (* ------ End Procedure LinesIntersect *)
The link to the HTML page shown above is an example of using a web browser (such as Firefox or Microsoft Edge) to act as an application, accepting input data and computing output using the builtin Javascript language interpreter of the browser.