§1. Introduction. Let X be a Hausdorff space and let ρ be a metric, not necessarily related to the topology of X. The space X is said to be fragmented by the metric ρ if each non-empty set in X has non-empty relatively open subsets of arbitrarily small ρ-diameter. The space X is said to be a σ-fragmented by the metric ρ if, for each ε>0, it is possible to write
![](//static.cambridge.org/content/id/urn%3Acambridge.org%3Aid%3Aarticle%3AS0025579300006926/resource/name/S0025579300006926_eqn1.gif?pub-status=live)
where each set Xi, i≥1, has the property that each non-empty subset of Xi, has a non-empty relatively open subset of ρ-diameter less than ε. If
is any family of subsets of X, we say that X is σ-fragmented by the metric ρ, using sets from
, if, for each ε>0, the sets Xi, i ≥ 1, in (1.1) can be taken from ![](//static.cambridge.org/binary/version/id/urn:cambridge.org:id:binary:20151022075944809-0305:S0025579300006926_inline1.gif?pub-status=live)