sanity check

sandbox | = S = | Saturday-night special

sanity check n.

[very common] 1. The act of checking a piece of code (or anything else, e.g., a Usenet posting) for completely stupid mistakes. Implies that the check is to make sure the author was sane when it was written; e.g., if a piece of scientific software relied on a particular formula and was giving unexpected results, one might first look at the nesting of parentheses or the coding of the formula, as a `sanity check', before looking at the more complex I/O or data structure manipulation routines, much less the algorithm itself. Compare reality check. 2. A run-time test, either validating input or ensuring that the program hasn't screwed up internally (producing an inconsistent value or state). 3. Conversationally, saying "sanity check" means you are requesting a check of your assumptions. "Wait a minute, sanity check, are we talking about the same Kevin here?"

sandbox | = S = | Saturday-night special