Support of a global section closed

algebraic-geometrysheaf-theory

While studying from Vakil — one particular problem seemed to stick out to me that I can't quite stop thinking about and I'm not sure where my logic is falling through.

Exercise 2.4.B of The Rising Sea asked us to prove that the support of a global section $s$, is defined to be
$$\text{Supp}(s) = \{p \in X \ | \ s_p \neq 0 \text{ in $\mathscr{F}_p$}\},$$
is closed. I had no trouble with this exercise and simply had shown that its complement was open. What I seem to be getting confused with is thinking about certain instances of the support and seemingly finding examples where it's not closed. For example, what if we consider the simple sheaf of continuous functions $\mathbb{R} \to \mathbb{R}$ and the following piecewise function:
$$f(x) = \begin{cases} -\frac{1}{2}x+1 &\text{if $x \in (-\infty,2)$} \\ 0 &\text{if $x \in [2,4]$} \\ \frac{1}{2}x-2 &\text{if $x \in (4,\infty)$} \end{cases}$$
We then have that the zero set of this global section, i.e.$\text{Supp}(f)^c$, is the interval $[2,4]$, which is closed in $\mathbb{R}$.

Where could my misunderstanding be?

Best Answer

To elaborate on my comment, the germ of $f(x)$ at 2 is \begin{equation} (f(x))_2=\begin{cases}0 &\text{if } x\geq 2\\ -\frac{1}{2}x+1 & \text{otherwise}\end{cases} \end{equation}

(this is on an "arbitrarily small" open neighborhood of 2)

Similarly, the germ of $f(x)$ at 4 is

\begin{equation} (f(x))_4=\begin{cases}0 &\text{if } x\leq 4\\ \frac{1}{2}x-2 & \text{otherwise}\end{cases} \end{equation}

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