The distance between two vertices and of a finite graph is the minimum length of the paths connecting them (i.e., the length of a graph geodesic). If no such path exists (i.e., if the vertices lie in different connected components), then the distance is set equal to . In a grid graph the distance between two vertices is the sum of the "vertical" and the "horizontal" distances (right figure above).
The matrix consisting of all distances from vertex to vertex is known as the all-pairs shortest path matrix, or more simply, the graph distance matrix.