In PHP, what is the significance of the period (.) operator when concatenating variables or strings, and how does it differ from other programming languages?

In PHP, the period (.) operator is used for concatenating variables or strings. It is used to combine two or more strings together. This operator is unique to PHP and is not commonly found in other programming languages.

// Concatenating two strings in PHP
$string1 = "Hello";
$string2 = "World";
$combinedString = $string1 . " " . $string2;
echo $combinedString; // Output: Hello World