Main functions
cppRouting package provide these functions :
- distance matrix (between all combinations origin-destination nodes),
- distances between origin and destination by pair,
- shortest paths between origin and destination by pair,
- shortest paths between all origin nodes and all destination nodes,
- Isochrones/isodistances with one or multiple breaks.
The choice between all the algorithms is available for get_distance_pair and get_path_pair. In these functions, uni-directional Dijkstra algorithm is stopped when the destination node is reached.
A* and NBA* are relevant if geographic coordinates of all nodes are provided. Note that coordinates should be expressed in a projection system.
To be accurate and efficient, A* and NBA* algorithms should use an admissible heuristic function (here the Euclidean distance), e.g cost and heuristic function must be expressed in the same unit.
In cppRouting, heuristic function h is defined such that : h(xi,yi,xdestination,ydestination)/k, with a constant k; so in the case where coordinates are expressed in meters and cost is expressed in time, k is the maximum speed allowed on the road. By default, constant is 1 and is designed for graphs with cost expressed in the same unit than coordinates (e.g meters).
If coordinates cannot be provided, bi-directional Dijkstra algorithm can offer a good alternative to A* in terms of performance.