[R] How to calculate the closest distance from a point to a curve?

[Feng Zhang]

Hely, R-list

Now I have non-parametric curve function, that is,
I only use N 2-Dimensional data points to represent
this curve, without explicit function formulation.

And given a new measurement (x1,x)', how can I calculate the shortese
Euclidean distance from this new
data point to the above curve?

Thanks a lot.

Fred