In many sampled-data systems the sampling interval T is "small" and the response

closely approximates the response

of the continuous system; one is then interested in evaluating the difference

for various values of

. In this paper this difference will be given as a power series in

whose coefficients can easily be determined in terms of the continuous response; if one wants to estimate the size of

for

to equal

within a specified error, the first term of this expansion will give an adequate measure of the error and hence of the maximum permissible

. Furthermore, since the resulting series converges rapidly, the expansion provides a simple method of evaluating

for a given

. The method is applied to a feedback system with a sampler; the singularities of the p-rational system function that gives the actual response at the sampling points, are obtained by a displacement of the singularities of the continuous system function.