Well, if you really want closest as in "the fewest
miles away", then you need to store some X,Y coordinates
for every zip code (not just the ones currently
in your database). Zip codes are organized such that ones
that are numerically close are also fairly close physically
but it is impossible to organize them such that those that
are physically close are also always numerically close.
Anyway, once you have X,Y coordinates, efficiently finding
the closest match can be tricky. One trick I developed long
ago (which I'm curious if others have used since I've never
run into it elsewhere) is to build a B-Tree key on
int($X/$W),$Y (for example, on
pack("NN",int($X/$W),$Y) or
sprintf("%08d.%08d",$X/$W,$Y)) where $W is a
"width" that is a little more than the distance you expect
nearest matches to be from each other.
This sorts your data into bands of width $W. Then finding
the closest match can be done with a few very fast queries.
The exact algorythm is rather complex (if you really want
to maximize the speed and if you can't guarantee a
reasonable upper bound on the distance to the nearest
match) but if you have a potentially huge number of points
to search, this can be a big win.
-
tye
(but my friends call me "Tye")
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