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sanity check

   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).