New guy with a problem

Last summer I had a problem with the hose between the tank and regulator. Flow was intermittent. Sometimes it appeared to be normal, then the next I had no flow at all. At some point the hose had been kinked and I'm guessing something internal separated. That, or some hoses have a back flow preventer and perhaps that was malfunctioning. I only know that a new hose cured my problem. I suppose a very unsafe test would be to close the valve on the bottle, remove the hose from the regulator but leave it attached to the bottle, then slowly turn the valve on at the bottle. If you get flow, it's probably not the hose. If you don't, there ya go. Ideally, you could test the hose with compressed air, but without the proper fittings... Just don't smoke while doing the test with the bottle.