The optimal form of selection principles for functions of a real variable

Let T be a nonempty set of real numbers, X a metric space with metric d and X^T the set of all functions from T into X. If fX^T and n is a positive integer, we set , where the supremum is taken over all numbers a₁,…,a_n,b₁,…,b_n from T such that a₁b₁a₂b₂a_nb_n. The sequence is called the modulus of variation of f in the sense of Chanturiya. We prove the following pointwise selection principle: If a sequence of functions is such that the closure in X of the set is compact for each tT and

(∗)

then there exists a subsequence of , which converges in X pointwise on T to a function fX^T satisfying lim_n→∞ν(n,f)/n=0. We show that condition (*) is optimal (the best possible) and that all known pointwise selection theorems follow from this result (including Helly's theorem). Also, we establish several variants of the above theorem for the almost everywhere convergence and weak pointwise convergence when X is a reflexive separable Banach space.