We study removable sets for Newtonian Sobolev functions in metric measure spaces satisfying the usual (local) assumptions of a doubling measure and a Poincaré inequality.In particular, when restricted to Euclidean spaces, a closed set E \subset \mathbb{R}^n with zero Lebesgue measure is shown to be removable for W^{1,p}(\mathbb{R}^n \setminus E) if and only if \mathbb{R}^n \setminus E supports a p -Poincaré inequality as a metric space. When p>1 , this recovers Koskela’s result ( Ark. Mat. \mathbf{37} (1999), 291–304), but for p=1 , as well as for metric spaces, it seems to be new. We also obtain the corresponding characterization for the Dirichlet spaces L^{1,p} . To be able to include p=1 , we first study extensions of Newtonian Sobolev functions in the case p=1 from a noncomplete space X to its completion \hat X . In these results, p -path almost open sets play an important role, and we provide a characterization of them by means of p -path open, p -quasiopen and p -finely open sets. We also show that there are nonmeasurable p -path almost open subsets of \mathbb{R}^n , n \ge 2 , provided that the continuum hypothesis is assumed to be true. Furthermore, we extend earlier results about measurability of functions with L^p -integrable upper gradients, about p -quasiopen, p -path open and p -finely open sets, and about Lebesgue points for N^{1,1} -functions, to spaces that only satisfy local assumptions.
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