Published online by Cambridge University Press: 26 April 2021
Let X be a real Banach space. The rectangular constant
$\mu (X)$
and some generalisations of it,
$\mu _p(X)$
for
$p \geq 1$
, were introduced by Gastinel and Joly around half a century ago. In this paper we make precise some characterisations of inner product spaces by using
$\mu _p(X)$
, correcting some statements appearing in the literature, and extend to
$\mu _p(X)$
some characterisations of uniformly nonsquare spaces, known only for
$\mu (X)$
. We also give a characterisation of two-dimensional spaces with hexagonal norms. Finally, we indicate some new upper estimates concerning
$\mu (l_p)$
and
$\mu _p(l_p)$
.