--- title: Little useless-useful R functions – Honest geographical... description: A fun R programming exercise that uses OpenStreetMap's Nominatim API and the Haversine distance formula to verify whether a geographical signpost (showing... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/little-useless-useful-r-functions-honest-geographical-location-signposts-lrkgeewmi twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: Little useless-useful R functions – Honest geographical location signposts | daily.dev og:description: A fun R programming exercise that uses OpenStreetMap's Nominatim API and the Haversine distance formula to verify whether a geographical signpost (showing... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/little-useless-useful-r-functions-honest-geographical-location-signposts-lrkgeewmi og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/LRkGEewmI.png og:image:alt: Little useless-useful R functions – Honest geographical location signposts og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # Little useless-useful R functions – Honest geographical location signposts **[R-bloggers](https://daily.dev/sources/rbloggers)** · 10 min read · 0 upvotes · 0 comments ## Summary A fun R programming exercise that uses OpenStreetMap's Nominatim API and the Haversine distance formula to verify whether a geographical signpost (showing distances to nearby cities) is honest about its actual location. The R code geocodes city names, builds a coarse-to-fine grid search to find the point where all distance circles intersect, and then identifies nearby populated cities using the `world.cities` dataset. The example validates distances from Ljubljana, Slovenia to four nearby cities. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [10 minutes](https://daily.dev/posts/10-minutes-lpvxisobp) · R-bloggers · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [How to Test Location-Based Software: A Practical QA Guide](https://daily.dev/posts/how-to-test-location-based-software-a-practical-qa-guide-yfet6xl0y) · Software Testing Magazine · 1 upvotes · 0 comments - [Exploring Snowflake’s Geospatial Functions: Mapping Pickup Points in Rueil-Malmaison \(France\): Part 2](https://daily.dev/posts/exploring-snowflake-s-geospatial-functions-mapping-pickup-points-in-rueil-malmaison-france-part--whlwbotsx) · Snowflake Community · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [R for Geospatial Predictive Mapping: Takeaways from the Talk](https://daily.dev/posts/r-for-geospatial-predictive-mapping-takeaways-from-the-talk-gwvmaejbw) · R-bloggers · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [World geography gotchas](https://daily.dev/posts/world-geography-gotchas-4tly7cdnx) · A Java geek · 0 upvotes · 0 comments --- Tags: [#r](https://daily.dev/tags/r), [#gis](https://daily.dev/tags/gis) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/little-useless-useful-r-functions-honest-geographical-location-signposts-lrkgeewmi) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"TechArticle","headline":"Little useless-useful R functions – Honest geographical location signposts","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/little-useless-useful-r-functions-honest-geographical-location-signposts-lrkgeewmi","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/little-useless-useful-r-functions-honest-geographical-location-signposts-lrkgeewmi"},"datePublished":"2026-08-01T20:03:40.089Z","dateModified":"2026-08-01T21:35:24.187Z","description":"A fun R programming exercise that uses OpenStreetMap's Nominatim API and the Haversine distance formula to verify whether a geographical signpost (showing...","image":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/f_auto,q_auto/v1/posts/42a2c35a2c980bacd241222131eeeee4?_a=AQAEuop","thumbnailUrl":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/f_auto,q_auto/v1/posts/42a2c35a2c980bacd241222131eeeee4?_a=AQAEuop","isAccessibleForFree":true,"articleSection":"R-bloggers","inLanguage":"en","publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180}},"author":{"@type":"Organization","name":"R-bloggers","logo":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/t_logo,f_auto/v1/logos/98bcbbdf72774292a55ceda8f2277f1e","url":"https://daily.dev/sources/rbloggers"},"commentCount":0,"discussionUrl":"https://daily.dev/posts/little-useless-useful-r-functions-honest-geographical-location-signposts-lrkgeewmi","interactionStatistic":[{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"LikeAction"},"userInteractionCount":0},{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"CommentAction"},"userInteractionCount":0}],"keywords":"r,gis","timeRequired":"PT10M"} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https://daily.dev"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"R-bloggers","item":"https://daily.dev/sources/rbloggers"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"name":"Little useless-useful R functions – Honest geographical location signposts"}]} ```