MATLAB: Finding index into an nx2 matrix that is close to a 1×2 vector.

Question

I have an nx2 matrix of latitude and longitude values that represents the route of a car. I also have a latitude/longitude for a point near that route. I want to find the index into the matrix that is closest to the point near the route.

Any suggestions?

NOTE: I used latitude and longitude to better explain the problem. The values aren't really lat/long.

Answer 1

search = [0.3, 0.5];
data   = rand(100, 2);
nData  = size(data, 1);
dist   = sum((data - search(ones(nData,1), :)) .^ 2, 2);
[minDist, minIndex] = min(dist);