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I tried setting up the two parametric line equations

$Assumptions = Element[(AB0|AB1|A0|A1),Vectors[n,Reals]] && Element[(t0|t1),Reals] P0 = AB0 t0 + A0 P1 = AB1 t1 + A

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And then I assume closest joining line to line 0 and line 1 is perpendicular to both line 1 and line 2. Thus the dot product of each line vector with the joining vector should be 0. I set up this pair of equations and try to solve.

Solve[(P0 - P1) . AB0 == 0 && (P0 - P1 ) . AB1 == 0, {t0,t1}]

The output of wolfram cloud ( mathematica notebook form ) is

enter image description here

which suggests either I have done something wrong or the language can't do what I'm trying. Note I know how to solve for a fixed number of dimensions by declaring that each symbolic variable is a vector. However I'd like to solve it generally.

I can do the general form on pen and paper because when you expand the two equations you get two equations where all the terms have reduced to scalars.

AB0.AB0 t0 - AB1 AB0 t1 = (A1 - A0)AB0 AB0.AB1 t0 - AB1 AB1 t1 = (A1 - A0)AB1
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It seems if I expand the dot product using tensorexpand then the solution becomes available.

$Assumptions = Element[(AB0|AB1|A0|A1),Vectors[2,Reals]] && Element[(t0|t1),Reals] P0 = AB0 t0 + A0; P1 = AB1 t1 + A1; eq1 = (P0 - P1 ).AB0 == 0; eq1 = TensorExpand[eq1] eq2 = (P0 - P1).AB1 == 0; eq2 = TensorExpand[eq2] Simplify[Solve[eq1 && eq2, {t0,t1}]]

enter image description here

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