Duality and distance formulas in Banach function spaces (Q2316099)

It has long been known that that there are a number of pairs of Banach function or sequence spaces, \(M_0\subset M\), defined by means of a little-\(o\), respectively big-\(O\) condition such that, in a natural norm, \(M\) is canonically isometric to \(M_0^{**}\) and \(M_0\) is an \(M\)-ideal in \(M\), hence \(M_0\) is an \(M\)-embedded space. Also, there are distance formulas for \(\text{dist}(x, M_0)\) in terms of a \(\limsup\)-condition. The best known and simplest example of this phenomenon is the pair \((c_0,\ell_\infty)\). In a series of papers, \textit{K. M. Perfekt} [Ark. Mat. 51, No. 2, 345--361 (2013; Zbl 1282.46011); Bull. Lond. Math. Soc. 47, No. 4, 677--685 (2015; Zbl 1333.46018); Math. Scand. 121, No. 1, 151--160 (2017; Zbl 1434.46008)] has provided an elegant general framework to produce examples of this kind. It seems to be the objective of the paper under review to survey these and a number of other examples from the literature. (This is not explicitly stated, but the paper contains hardly any original results.) It has to be said though that, in contrast to Perfekt's articles, the presentation here is far from perfect. One can find unexplained and inconsistent notation, incomplete sentences and formulas, incomplete proofs, a wrong definition of a weakly compact operator, the erroneous claim that a compact operator is the same as a completely continuous operator, and a substantial number of typos. (The attentive reader might notice that the paper was accepted within 7 days of submission by a journal which has one of the authors on its editorial board.)