What Is a Range Check?

By Staff WriterLast Updated March 25, 2020

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A range check is often used when a person works with data consisting of numbers, dates and times, or currency, ensuring that a number is within a specific range. Range checks allow a person to set suitable boundaries.

An example of a range check is checking to see if the value of a 16-bit integer is within the capacity of a 16-bit integer. When a range check is performed, upper and lower boundaries are specified. When there is only the need to specify one value, such as the minimum volume of a cube being zero without a designated maximum volume, this is known as a “limit check” instead of a “range check.”