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sanity check
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sanity check /n./ 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).
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