Extending Lipschitz maps into <Emphasis Type="Italic">C</Emphasis>(<Emphasis Type="Italic">K</Emphasis>)-spaces

We show that if K is a compact metric space then C(K) is a 2-absolute Lipschitz retract. We then study the best Lipschitz extension constants for maps into C(K) from a given metric space M, extending recent results of Lancien and Randrianantoanina. They showed that a finite-dimensional normed space which is polyhedral has the isometric extension property for C(K)-spaces; here we show that the same result holds for spaces with Gateaux smooth norm or of dimension two; a three-dimensional counterexample is also given. We also show that X is polyhedral if and only if every subset E of X has the universal isometric extension property for C(K)-spaces. We also answer a question of Naor on the extension of Hölder continuous maps.