Do you need to consider periods in decimals and abbreviations? 
Mr. Smith paid Jr. $7.43 for 0.4 lbs. of coffee.

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You'll find that the period is overused and highly context sensitive. There are even ambiguities that cannot be determined contextually, but need semantic hints (or the original author to clarify).

Perhaps other language designers avoided the period on purpose?

-QM
--
Quantum Mechanics: The dreams stuff is made of

In reply to Re: split $data, $unquoted_value; by QM
in thread split $data, $unquoted_value; by Ovid

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