AbstractThis article is a first step towards understanding some of the theoretical aspects involved in simulating a continuous-time linear control system. The simulation of the pole assignment problem of the system is investigated. We show the positive result that simulation of the continuous version pole assignment procedure by the zeroth order hold function does not destroy the stability property. A stronger result states that this kind of simulation assigns the poles of the sampled system to the corresponding sampling poles of the closed-loop continuous system up to a second order of the sampling period.