Phil,
 
If you have only a list of addresses and nothing else - i have to recognize i 
am "lost". But if you have more info you can use a GIS software and it will 
calculate your distance automatically for all your addresses. To have your 
distance in miles or Km you need to have a projection in your data which will 
establish your units.
 
The very basic principle is that for each address you have a set of 
coordinates, x, y and you actually use these to calculate distances. If your 
file is for exaple a point shape file (standard for ESRI ArcGIS products) you 
can very simply perform this task using either "shortest driving route" or "as 
the crow flies" - again depending on what other info you have in the file. A 
"shape file" is actually a group of files with with data attributes, projection 
info and so on - so even if you don't see xy coordinates, they actually are 
imbeded in the file.
 
I suspect Mapquest or any other mapping web product has a database with all 
those addresses with xy coordinates. The user needs to know only the address 
and behind doors there is an sql process which selects particular addresses 
together with all the other attributes attached to it and calculate distances 
because it "knows" coordinates, a network of roads and so on.
 
I am not sure this helps but at least maybe gives you some ideas where to look 
next.
Monica
 

Message: 53Date: Thu, 06 Sep 2007 14:42:32 -0400From: Philip James Smith 
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>Subject: [R] computing distance in miles or km between 2 
streetaddressesTo: [EMAIL PROTECTED]: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>Content-Type: 
text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Hi R-ers: I need to compute the 
distance between 2 street addresses in either km or miles. I do not care if the 
distance is a "shortest driving route" or if it is "as the crow flies." Does 
anybody know how to do this? Can it be done in R? I have thousands of 
addresses, so I think that Mapquest is out of the question! Please rely to: 
[EMAIL PROTECTED] Thank you!Phil Smith  
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