Restriction categories as enriched categories

Abstract: Restriction categories were introduced to provide an axiomatic setting for the study of partially defined mappings; they are categories equipped with an operation called restriction which assigns to every morphism an endomorphism of its domain, to be thought of as the partial identity that is defined to just the same degree as the original map. In this paper, we show that restriction categories can be identified with \emph{enriched categories} in the sense of Kelly for a suitable enrichment base. By varying that base appropriately, we are also able to capture the notions of join and range restriction category in terms of enriched category theory.