In this paper, the containment control problem of continuous-time linear multi-agent systems is investigated. An aperiodic sampled-data based protocol is induced by using neighboring information with uncertainly time-varying sampling intervals. By utilizing the proposed protocol and properties of Laplacian matrix, the containment control problem of continuous-time linear multi-agent systems is equivalently transformed into a stability problem of discrete-time linear systems. The stability analysis is based on the robustness of related discrete-time systems against perturbation caused by the variation of sampling intervals. By using small-gain theorem, sufficient conditions are obtained to guarantee the stability of uncertain discrete-time systems. Furthermore, two special cases are given to illustrate the method proposed in this paper. The theoretical results are verified by some simulations. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.