I'm working on the AStar gig and I've decided I will likely need an arbitrary number of dimensions (this allows you to take a standard space and make it hard to move through - rather like climbing a mountain on a 2D plane or swimming through custard on a 3D plane).

I would like to know if I've got my maths right or if I'm slowing procedures down too much.

What follows is a stripped down view of the Node class - it allows Nodes to have different dimensions. When it has to calculate a discrepancy in dimensions it assumes the missing dimensions are flat (compare cube to plane).
Code:

Node a, b;
void setup(){
  a = new Node(new float [] {10, 10, 10});
  b = new Node(new float [] {20, 20});
  println(a.dist(b));
}
class Node{
  float [] locale;
  Node(float [] locale){
    this.locale = locale;
  }
  float dist(Node b){
    int iterations = max(locale.length, b.locale.length);
    float squaredSum = 0.0;
    for(int i = 0; i < iterations; i++){
	squaredSum += sq((i < b.locale.length ? b.locale[i] : 0.0) - (i < locale.length ? locale[i] : 0.0));
    }
    return sqrt(squaredSum);
  }
}
 

I'm sure the equation is right but I can't tell. Plus those inline conditionals have me worried too.

Please can someone tell me?