Pointwise approximation by the modified Szasz-Mirakyan operators

In this paper we obtain an estimate on the rate of convergence of modified Szasz-Mirakyan operators for bounded functions satisfying certain growth condition. In the case of functions of bounded variation our result is better than the known results due to Sahai and Prasad (1993, Publ. Inst. Math. (Beograd) (N.S.) 53, 73-80) and Gupta and Pant (1999, J. Math. Anal. Appl. 233, 476-483). More important, by means of new metric form, our result successfully deals with the pointwise approximation of more general class of functions than the class of functions of bounded variation considered in the references as mentioned above.