Class lsst::jointcal::FastFinder

class FastFinder

Fast locator in starlists.

This is an auxillary class for matching objects from starlists. It allows to locate rapidly the closest objects from a given position. The very simple strategy is to sort objects according to 1 coordinate x, and to build an index that allows to select the objects with the x coordinate inside an interval. Then every slice in x is sorted according to y, which enables a fast scan inside a x slice. listMatchCollect takes about 10ms (PC 450 MHz, optimized “-O4”) for a match between lists of about 2000 objects each, which is fast enough for our needs. The same “locator” is used in listMatchupShift, to avoid scanning the whole input lists. Timing on listMatchCollect and listMatchupShift indicates a gain in speed by more than one order of magnitude after implementation of this FastFinder.