On compact subsets of the reals

Motivated by results of J. R. Kline and R. L. Moore (1919) that a compact subset of the plane, homeomorphic to a subset of the reals, lies on the arc, we give a purely topological characterisation of compact sets of the reals. This allows us to reduce investigations of Cantorvals to properties of countable linear orders and to show, applying the Mazurkiewicz–Sierpiński Theorem (1920), that there exist continuum many non-homeomorphic L-Cantorvals.