Merge branch 'issue-202'

Closes #205 (rebased onto pmd/5.4.x)

pmd-java/src/main/resources/rulesets/java/strings.xml

@@ -154,7 +154,8 @@ sb.append('a');		// use this instead
         class="net.sourceforge.pmd.lang.java.rule.strings.ConsecutiveAppendsShouldReuseRule"
         externalInfoUrl="${pmd.website.baseurl}/rules/java/strings.html#ConsecutiveAppendsShouldReuse">
     <description>
-Consecutively calls to StringBuffer/StringBuilder .append should reuse the target object. This can improve the performance.
+Consecutive calls to StringBuffer/StringBuilder .append should be chained, reusing the target object. This can improve the performance
+by producing a smaller bytecode, reducing overhead and improving inlining. A complete analysis can be found [here](https://github.com/pmd/pmd/issues/202#issuecomment-274349067)
     </description>
     <priority>3</priority>
     <example>
@@ -398,4 +399,4 @@ public class Foo {
 		</example>
 	</rule>
 
-</ruleset>
+</ruleset>

src/site/markdown/overview/changelog.md

@@ -252,6 +252,8 @@ to avoid XSS attacks.
     *   [#1551](https://sourceforge.net/p/pmd/bugs/1551/): \[java] InvalidSlf4jMessageFormat: fails with NPE
 *   java-unnecessary
     *   [#199](https://github.com/pmd/pmd/issues/199): \[java] UselessParentheses: Parentheses in return statement are incorrectly reported as useless
+*   java-strings
+    *   [#202](https://github.com/pmd/pmd/issues/202): \[java] \[doc] ConsecutiveAppendsShouldReuse is not really an optimization
 *   XML
     *   [#1518](https://sourceforge.net/p/pmd/bugs/1518/): \[xml] Error while processing xml file with ".webapp" in the file or directory name
 *   psql