Really easy syntex question

[Anon]

I've been looking at a lot of example code and I see the "@" operator used a lot in code. The only problem is that I don't know what this operator does so could anyone please explain it to me?

Thanks,
Jay

[Anon]

@ suppresses PHP's built-in error messages. For example,
if you're inserting a row in a database that violates a
unique-key restraint, normally PHP will whine at the user
by writing an error message that goes straight into the
html output. You can turn this off with '@' and then
trap the error and display your own message with better
formatting, etc.

[Anon]

It's for error suppression. The easy way out. The best thing to do is detailed coding with exception handling.