We prove the following results: (1) A quasi-metrizable space is compact if and only if every compatible quasi-metric has a quasi-metric left d—sequential completion. (2) A quasipseudometrizable space is countably compact if and only if every compatible quasi-pseudometric is pointwise bounded. (3) A quasi-pseudometrizable space is compact if and only if every compatible quasi-pseudometric is precompact.

Let Q be the space of all rational numbers and (X, τ) be a topological space where X is countably infinite. Here we prove that (1) τ is the join of two topologies on X both homeomorphic to Q if and only if τ is non-compact and metrizable, and (2) τ is the join of topologies on X each homeomorphic to Q if and only if τ is Tychonoff and noncompact.

For a cardinal m with ω ≤ m ≤ 2≤m is embeddable in it as a closed subspace. We derive this result from the corresponding statement for metric spaces.

Let Q denote the rationals, P the irrationals, C the Cantor set and L the space C − {p} (where p ∈ C). Let f : X → Y be a perfect continuous surjection. We show: (1) If X ∈ {Q, P, Q × P}, or if f is irreducible and X ∈ {C, L}, then Y is homeomorphic to X if Y is zero-dimensional. (2) If X ∈ {P, C, L} and f is irreducible, then there is a dense subset S of Y such that f|f ← [S] is a homeomorphism onto S. However, if Z is any σ-compact nowhere locally compact metric space then there is a perfect irreducible continuous surjection from Q × C onto Z such that each fibre of the map is homeomorphic to C.

Let (X, d) be a metric space and Y and Z subsets of X. We say that Z is a bisector in Y and write Y⊳Z iff Y⊃Z and there are two distinct points y1, y2 ∈ Y such that Z = ={z:d(z, y1) = d(z, y2) and z∈Y}. By a reduced bisector chain in (X, d) of length n we understand a chain X = such that dim Xn≤0 and dimXn-1>0). By r(X, d) we denote the maximum length of reduced bisector chains in (X, d). For a metrizable topological space X we introduce the topological invariant r(X) as the minimum of r(X, d) taken over the set of all metrizations d of X. We prove that the function r(X) coincides with the dimension of X on the class of compact metric spaces.