Claim The Banach space C 0 ([0, 1]) is not finite dimensional.

Proof. It suffices to prove that the closed unit ball


B1 (0) := u : kuk 1
is not compact (see Theorem 2.22 in the book by Bressan). To this end, it suffices to exhibit a
sequence {un } B1 (0) that does not have converging subsequences. We argue according to the
following steps.
Step 1: we construct the sequence {un }. For every n N \ {0}, we set
1
nx 0x
n






un (x) := 1 2
2 nx x
n n







0 otherwise.
Note that
(1) kun k = max |un (x)| = 1 for every n.
x[0,1]

Step 2: we show that

(2) lim un (x) = 0 for every x [0, 1].
n+

If x = 0, then un (x) = 0 for every n and hence limn+ un (0) = 0. If x > 0, then un (x) = 0 for
every n > 2/x and hence again limn+ un (x) = 0. This establishes (2).
Step 3: we argue by contradiction and we assume that {un } has a converging subsequence.
Namely, there are subsequence {unk } and a function u C 0 ([0, 1]) such that
(3) lim kunk uk = 0.
k+
This implies that
lim unk (x) = u(x) for every x [0, 1].
k+
Owing to (2), this implies
(4) u(x) = 0 for every x [0, 1].
On the other hand, by combining (1) and (3) we arrive at kuk = 1, which contradicts (4). This
implies that {un } does not have converging subsequences and hence concludes the proof of the
claim.