  In this paper we study a new family of sinc--like functions, defined on an
interval of finite width. These functions, which we call ``little sinc'', are
orthogonal and share many of the properties of the sinc functions. We show that
the little sinc functions supplemented with a variational approach enable one
to obtain accurate results for a variety of problems. We apply them to the
interpolation of functions on finite domain and to the solution of the
Schr\"odinger equation, and compare the performance of present approach with
others.
