The Structure of Extended Real-valued Metric Spaces

An extended metric on a set X is a distance function that satisfies the usual properties of a metric except that it can assume values of infinity, in addition to nonnegative real values. Given a metrizable space we exhibit a universal space for all extended metric spaces compatible with the topology. Defining a set in an extended metric space to be bounded if it is contained in a finite union of open balls, we characterize those bornologies on X that can be realized as bornologies of metrically bounded sets. We also consider a second possible definition of bounded set in this setting.