1. sanity check 1. Checking 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 hasnt screwed up internally producing an inconsistent value or state. [Jargon File]
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