What does @ in front of variable mean?

[ollie007]

$comment = @$comment_desc[$type];

 

what does it mean?

[Jibberish]

It turns off error reporting for that particular expression I think.

[gevans]

Not turn off exactly (though you're not wrong).

 

It supresses errors. If you're not fully comfortable with it, I wouldn't recommend it at this stage.

 

I use it to supress the mail() function when working locally, as I don't have a mailing facility through my set up. Apart from that I prefer catching all errors, as you should.

[Daniel0]

Not turn off exactly (though you're not wrong).

 

Actually, it's quite accurate saying it turns them off. The way it works internally is that it sets error_reporting=0, executes the statement and then reverts error_reporting to whatever it was before. This is what makes it so inefficient.

 

This:

@someFunction();

is equivalent to

$oldErrorReporting = error_reporting(0);
someFunction();
error_reporting($oldErrorReporting);

[haku]

More often than not, it really shouldn't be used. There are a couple functions out there that output errors when they aren't executed, at which point it can be a good thing, but most people who use it are just being sloppy in their programming.

[TGWSE_GY]

I tend to agree with haku!

[PFMaBiSmAd]

On a live server, display_errors will be OFF (and if they are not, you should globally make them off), so there is no reason at all to use @ in any code. On a development system, where display_errors would be ON, you want to see all errors, even if to just confirm that your code is executing down an expected path when something like a mail server is not available.