In
mathematics, more specifically in
general topology and related branches, a
net or
Moore–Smith sequence is a generalization of the notion of a
sequence. In essence, a sequence is a
function with domain the
natural numbers, and in the context of topology, the codomain of this function is usually any topological space. However, in the context of topology, sequences do not fully encode all information about a function between topological spaces. In particular, the following two conditions are
not equivalent in general for a map
f between topological spaces
X and
Y:
- The map f is continuous (in the topological sense)
- Given any point x in X, and any sequence in X converging to x, the composition of f with this sequence converges to f(x) (continuous in the sequential sense)