[R-sig-Geo] How to neighbours list functions match coords?

[Lee Hachadoorian]

The example from the documentation for nbdists() uses two predefined
objects (columbus and col.gal.nb), so it's not clear to me how
coordinates are being matched (see below)

library(spdep)
example(columbus)
coords <- coordinates(columbus)
dlist <- nbdists(col.gal.nb, coords)

Does nbdists() match coordinates via location or row name? Or does it
rely on the ordering of the objects? What I would like to do is go from
a SpatialPolygonsDataFrame to neighbourslist to nbdist as follows:

nb = poly2nb(columbus, row.names = columbus$COLUMBUS_I, queen = FALSE)
nbdist = nbdists(nb, coords = coordinates(columbus), longlat = TRUE)

Is this reliable?

This question would apply similarly to any neighbours list function with
a coords parameter, e.g. plot.nb or nb2lines.

Thanks,
--Lee

-- 
Lee Hachadoorian
PhD Student, Geography
Program in Earth & Environmental Sciences
CUNY Graduate Center