Sometimes I think it's ok to assume things about the person asking the question, and the thing I'm assuming here is that the . is a habit. I see lots of people using . where it's not needed, but as decoration; .join, .part, .quit, etc.
In this case, there's absolutely no point in hiding the echo, so I'd say it's a fairly safe assumption.
.echo -q caca is equivalent to:
(nothing)
