Fast rectangle to rectangle intersection

Robin Rodricks picture Robin Rodricks · May 2, 2010 · Viewed 86.2k times · Source

What's a fast way to test if 2 rectangles are intersecting?


A search on the internet came up with this one-liner (WOOT!), but I don't understand how to write it in Javascript, it seems to be written in an ancient form of C++.

struct
{
    LONG    left;
    LONG    top;
    LONG    right;
    LONG    bottom;
} RECT; 

bool IntersectRect(const RECT * r1, const RECT * r2)
{
    return ! ( r2->left > r1->right
        || r2->right < r1->left
        || r2->top > r1->bottom
        || r2->bottom < r1->top
        );
}

Answer

Daniel Vassallo picture Daniel Vassallo · May 2, 2010

This is how that code can be translated to JavaScript. Note that there is a typo in your code, and in that of the article, as the comments have suggested. Specifically r2->right left should be r2->right < r1->left and r2->bottom top should be r2->bottom < r1->top for the function to work.

function intersectRect(r1, r2) {
  return !(r2.left > r1.right || 
           r2.right < r1.left || 
           r2.top > r1.bottom ||
           r2.bottom < r1.top);
}

Test case:

var rectA = {
  left:   10,
  top:    10,
  right:  30,
  bottom: 30
};

var rectB = {
  left:   20,
  top:    20,
  right:  50,
  bottom: 50
};

var rectC = {
  left:   70,
  top:    70,
  right:  90,
  bottom: 90
};

intersectRect(rectA, rectB);  // returns true
intersectRect(rectA, rectC);  // returns false