[StefanKarpinski]

We considered juxtaposition with string literals for concatenation for a while, as in `file ".txt"`. That would make `a "" b` a natural string concatenation syntax, which rather like it, but Jeff felt it was a bit too clever/weird, so we didn't do it.

[cbkeller]

Oh interesting. That would work too, but `*` is really quite nice in the context that string concatenation is properly the associative binary operation of a free monoid.