 Affine algebraic curve

An affine algebraic curve is an affine variety of Krull dimension one. An irreducible affine curve has a finitely generated one-dimensional domain as its coordinate ring. Quotienting this ring by a nonzero element gives a zero-dimensional Noetherian ring, hence an Artinian ring. Consequently a nonzero regular function has finitely many zeros. No nonsingularity assumption is part of the definition.