What is the significance of the ".=" operator in PHP and how is it commonly used in concatenating strings?

The ".=" operator in PHP is used for concatenating strings. It appends the right operand to the left operand. This operator is commonly used to build up strings by adding additional content to an existing string variable.

// Example of using the ".=" operator to concatenate strings
$string1 = "Hello, ";
$string2 = "world!";
$string1 .= $string2;

echo $string1; // Output: Hello, world!