title: Why a full stop, "." and not a plus symbol, "+", for string concatenation in PHP?
body: <p>Why did the designers of PHP decide to use a full stop / period / "." as the string
  concatenation operator rather than the more usual plus symbol "+" ?</p>
  
  <p>Is there any advantage to it, or any reason at all?  Or did they just like to? :o)</p>