shlemiel

I write something like Shlemiel the painter’s algorithm from this old Joel on Software article [0].

The next day Shlemiel paints 30 yards of the road.

The next day Shlemiel only gets 150 yards done.

Any time I hear of an O(n^2) problem I remember Shlemiel the painter.

By returning the pointer to where copying ended, you don't need a separate strcat function any more, nor do you have the Shlemiel The Painter problem with strcat.

That sounds like a Shlemiel The Painter problem.

There's an old Joel on Software one related to string concatenation: Shlemiel gets a job as a street painter, painting the dotted lines down the middle of the road.

The Shlemiel problem comes up when you use strcat in a loop, since each strcat call needs to recalculate the length of the loop, which takes longer as the string gets longer.

> The next day Shlemiel paints 30 yards of the road.

> The next day Shlemiel only gets 150 yards done.

Jeff is not quite on the ball with his reference to the "Shlemiel" algorithm.

Concatenating strings like this is known as "Shlemiel the Painter's Algorithm", since each concatenation starts back at the beginning of the string.

He's got a "Shlemiel the painter" algorithm going on with his C code...

Indeed, it's an example of "Shlemiel the Painter's Algorithm".

Further, when retrieving multiple parameters, you have a Shlemiel-the-painter algorithm.