It's not just Java that uses the dot. Ruby, JavaScript, C++, Eiffel, Python, Object Pascal, Oberon, and C are a few languages that use the dot for dereferencing one thing or another.

PHP also uses -> for methods and such, but I don't remember the last time I wanted Perl to have syntax decsions based on PHP.

As for frequency analysis (Huffman Coding), as often as people dereference stuff in modern Perl, it's smart to use an unshifted single key for it. I don't enjoy typing -> all the time, and if it becomes less common I'll appreciate that. Sure, concatenation goes from one unshifted character to one shifted character, but how many times do you concatenate a string vs. passing it around?