What is the use of the @ symbol in PHP?

user_22550 0
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I have seen uses of @ in front of certain functions, like the following:

$fileHandle = @fopen($fileName, $writeAttributes);

What is the use of this symbol?

error-suppression operators php
11 Answers
user_218860

It suppresses errors.

See Error Control Operators in the manual:

PHP supports one error control operator: the at sign (@). When prepended to an expression in PHP, any error messages that might be generated by that expression will be ignored.

If you have set a custom error handler function with set_error_handler() then it will still get called, but this custom error handler can (and should) call error_reporting() which will return 0 when the call that triggered the error was preceded by an @...

user_1040400

Also note that despite errors being hidden, any custom error handler (set with set_error_handler) will still be executed!

nickf_90210

@ suppresses the error message thrown by the function. fopen throws an error when the file doesn't exit. @ symbol makes the execution to move to the next line even the file doesn't exists. My suggestion would be not using this in your local environment when you develop a PHP code.

user_83929260
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