TITLE: What is the relationship between completeness and local compactness?
QUESTION [13 upvotes]: On the one hand, $\mathbb{Q}$ is neither complete (as a metric space) nor locally compact (as a topological space). On the other hand, $\mathbb{R}$ is both complete and locally compact.
My question is, what is the relationship between completeness and local compactness? e.g. Does one imply the other?

REPLY [11 votes]: Note that the Baire space $\mathbb{N}^\mathbb{N}$ (which is homeomorphic to the space of irrationals) is a completely metrizable space which is not locally compact (in fact all compact subsets of $\mathbb{N}^\mathbb{N}$ have empty interior).
While locally compact metric spaces may not be complete (for example, as in Brad's answer, the open unit interval $(0,1)$ under the usual metric), these spaces will always be completely metrizable.  There are at least two ways to see this result:

Every locally compact metric space will be an open subset of its completion, and every G$_\delta$ subset of a complete metric space is completely metrizable.
Every locally compact completely regular space is Čech-complete (i.e., is a G$_\delta$ subset of its Stone-Čech (or any other) compactification), and a metric space is completely metrizable iff it is Čech-complete.