I belive the real source of the problem is the lack of non-alphanumeric symbols in ASCII. We all know Wall was pretty meticulous picking right symbols. So how on earth did he arrive at "." for concatenation? As you say, "." is pretty universal for "stop". Personally, I think "." and "->" both suck for different reasons. It's a choice between a lesser of two evils and there ain't much you can do about it.

$PM = "Perl Monk's";
$MCF = "Most Clueless Friar Abbot Bishop";
$nysus = $PM . $MCF;
Click here if you love Perl Monks