TITLE: Does absolute continuity of $f$ on $[\epsilon,1]$ and continuity at $f=0$ imply absolute continuity on $[0,1]$?
QUESTION [6 upvotes]: $\textbf{Question}$: Let $f$ be absolutely continuous on the interval $[\epsilon, 1]$ for $0<\epsilon<1$. Does the continuity of $f$ at 0 imply that $f$ is absolutely continuous on $[0,1]$? What if f is also of bounded variation on $[0,1]$?
$\textbf{Attempt}$:
My thoughts are that $f$ is NOT absolutely continuous on $[0,1]$.
The definition from my textbook states that a function $F$ defined on $[a,b]$ is absolutely continuous if for any $\epsilon>0$ there exists $\delta >0$ so that $\sum_{k=1}^{N}|F(b_{k})-F(a_{k})|<\epsilon$ whenever $\sum_{k=1}^{N}(b_{k}-a_{k})<\delta$ and the intervals $(a_{k},b_{k})$ are disjoint.
So, I think that the point $0$ is not included in this definition - $f$ is differentiable a.e. which does not necessarily include the boundary at the point 0, even if the point itself exists.
Is this correct? My guess is then that the bounded variation assumption will make $F$ absolutely continuous on $[0,1]$ but I am not sure why.

REPLY [2 votes]: Here's another counter example:  
Let $f(x)=x^2\sin(1/x^2)$ on $(0,1]$ and $f(0)=0$. You can check that this function is continuous on $[0,1]$. On every $[\epsilon, 1]$, the derivative of $f$ is bounded so $f$ is Lipschitz on such intervals and therefore is also absolutely continuous on $[\epsilon,1]$. But $f$ is not of bounded variation (let me know if you would like to see details) on $[0,1]$ and thus is not absolutely continuous on this domain.
As the other poster wrote, if $f$ is bv on $[0,1]$, we can use the condition that it is absolutely continuous on $[\epsilon,1]$ to show that is is Luzin (sends measure $0$ sets to measure $0$ sets) on the whole interval, thus proving that it is AC.