A theorem about countable decomposability

A function f:X → ℝ is countably decomposable (into continuous functions) if the topological space X can be partitioned into countably many sets An with each restriction f│ An continuous. According to L. V. Keldysh(2), the question whether every Baire function is countably decomposable was first raised by N. N. Luzin, and answered by P. S. Novikov. The answer is negative even for Baire-1 functions, as is shown in (2) (see also (1). In this paper we develop a characterization of the countably decomposable functions on a separable metric space X (see Corollary 1). We deduce that when X is complete they include all functions possessing the property P defined by D. E. Peek in (3): each non-empty σ-perfect set H contains a point at which f│ H is continuous. The example given by Peek shows that not every countably decomposable Baire-1 function has property P.