sanity check


sanity check

(programming)1. Checking code (or anything else, e.g. aUsenet posting) for completely stupid mistakes. Impliesthat the check is to make sure the author was sane when it waswritten; e.g. if a piece of scientific software relied on aparticular formula and was giving unexpected results, onemight first look at the nesting of parentheses or the codingof the formula, as a "sanity check", before looking at themore complex I/O or data structure manipulation routines, muchless the algorithm itself.

Compare reality check.

2. A run-time test, either validating input or ensuring thatthe program hasn't screwed up internally (producing aninconsistent value or state).