Building upon [this][1] question in Math.SE, I think the following might be rather of interest for MO. In the literature on measure theory, probability and functional analysis the definition of a subset $A \subseteq X$ of a topological space $X$ to be relatively sequentially compact is not unique: 1. $A$ is relatively sequentially compact in $X$ if its closure $\overline{A}$ in $X$ is sequentially compact, i.e. every sequence in $\overline{A}$ has a convergent subsequence (with limit in $\overline{A}$) 2. $A$ is relatively sequentially compact in $X$ if every sequence in $A$ has a convergent subsequence with limit in $\overline{A}$. In definition 2 it is not really necessary to explicitely demand the limit to be contained in $\overline{A}$ (the limit of any sequence in $A$ is always contained in $\overline{A}$ and even in the sequential closure of $A$). Clearly, 1 $\Rightarrow$ 2 but for general topological spaces $X$ the converse does not hold as shown in the linked Math.SE thread. Another example can be also found in Meggonsin, "An Introduction to Banach Space Theory", p. 161, Exc. 2.15. **Remark**: It seems to be not only the case that a few authors prefer some definition to the other but rather that roughly speaking half of the literature (I was reading so far) uses definition 1 and the other half definition 2. Both have advantages and disadvantages. **Question**: Can the spaces $X$ in which 1 $\Leftrightarrow$ 2 for any subset $A \subseteq X$ be characterized by already familiar topological properties? Note that for the weak topology on a Banach space $X$ these two definitions seem to be equivalent since I found versions of the Eberlein-Smulian theorem which equate weak relative compactness to weak relative sequential compactness with both definitions. But which property of the weak topology on $X$ is really used to equate these two definitions? [1]: https://math.stackexchange.com/questions/1585584/definition-for-relatively-sequentially-compact/1586665#1586665