Let X be a real Banach space. The rectangular constant $\mu (X)$ and some generalisations of it, $\mu _p(X)$ for $p \geq 1$ , were introduced by Gastinel and Joly around half a century ago. In this paper we make precise some characterisations of inner product spaces by using $\mu _p(X)$ , correcting some statements appearing in the literature, and extend to $\mu _p(X)$ some characterisations of uniformly nonsquare spaces, known only for $\mu (X)$ . We also give a characterisation of two-dimensional spaces with hexagonal norms. Finally, we indicate some new upper estimates concerning $\mu (l_p)$ and $\mu _p(l_p)$ .

We characterize diametrically maximal and constant width sets in $C(K)$, where $K$ is any compact Hausdorff space. These results are applied to prove that the sum of two diametrically maximal sets needs not be diametrically maximal, thus solving a question raised in a paper by Groemer. A characterization of diametrically maximal sets in $\ell _{1}^{3}$ is also given, providing a negative answer to Groemer's problem in finite dimensional spaces. We characterize constant width sets in ${{c}_{0}}\left( I \right)$, for every $I$, and then we establish the connections between the Jung constant of a Banach space and the existence of constant width sets with empty interior. Porosity properties of families of sets of constant width and rotundity properties of diametrically maximal sets are also investigated. Finally, we present some results concerning non-reflexive and Hilbert spaces.

the interplay between the behaviour of approximately convex (and approximately affine) functions on the unit ball of a banach space and the geometry of banach $k$-spaces is studied.

Given a Banach space X, we investigate the behaviour of the metric projection PF onto a subset F with a bounded complement.

We highlight the special role of points at which d(x, F) attains a maximum. In particular, we consider the case of X as a Hilbert space: this case is related to the famous problem of the convexity of Chebyshev sets.