reality check (testing) The simplest kind of functional test of software or hardware; doing the equivalent of asking it what 2 + 2 is and seeing if it says four. The software equivalent of a smoke test. A reality check may include letting a real user try out prototype software.
A sanity check is even more basic, the equivalent of checking that the above addition was implemented with an addition operator rather than subtraction. Last updated: 2007-03-15
