METHOD TO SIMPLIFY AND SPEED UP DESIGN RULE/ELECTRICAL RULE CHECKS

A method, apparatus and computer program product for checking of integrated circuit design files using rules files. Each of the rules files has a rule associated therewith. The rules are sequentially compared with objects associated with the design files in an object-to-check-pool (OTCP). The sequence in which the rules are compared to objects in the OTCP is arrange to maximize a probability of determining whether design characteristics of the objects in the OTCP satisfies all rules associated with the rules files while minimizing a number of rules that must be compared with the OTCP.