Intervals with a separation of maxgap or
less and a minimum of minoverlap overlapping positions, allowing for
maxgap, are considered to be overlapping. maxgap should
be a scalar, non-negative, integer. minoverlap should be a scalar,
positive integer.
type
By default, any overlap is accepted. By specifying the type
parameter, one can select for specific types of overlap. The types correspond
to operations in Allen's Interval Algebra (see references). If type
is start or end, the intervals are required to have matching
starts or ends, respectively. While this operation seems trivial, the naive
implementation using outer would be much less efficient. Specifying
equal as the type returns the intersection of the start and
end matches. If type is within, the query interval must
be wholly contained within the subject interval. Note that all matches must
additionally satisfy the minoverlap constraint described above.
The maxgap parameter has special meaning with the special
overlap types. For start, end, and equal, it specifies
the maximum difference in the starts, ends or both, respectively. For
within, it is the maximum amount by which the query may be wider
than the subject.