DistanceTo.java

/* XXL: The eXtensible and fleXible Library for data processing

Copyright (C) 2000-2011 Prof. Dr. Bernhard Seeger
                        Head of the Database Research Group
                        Department of Mathematics and Computer Science
                        University of Marburg
                        Germany

This library is free software; you can redistribute it and/or
modify it under the terms of the GNU Lesser General Public
License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either
version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

This library is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU
Lesser General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU Lesser General Public
License along with this library;  If not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>. 

    http://code.google.com/p/xxl/

*/

package xxl.core.util;

/**
 * An interface for determining the distance between two objects (see also
 * Comparable <--> Comparator).
 * 
 * @param <T> the type of the object whose distance related to this object can
 *        be determined.
 * @see xxl.core.util.Distance
 */
public interface DistanceTo<T> {

	/**
	 * Computes the distance between this object and the given object.
	 * 
	 * @param object to calculate distance to.
	 * @return returns the distance between this object and the given one.
	 */
	public abstract double distanceTo(T object);
	
}