please explain

[narjis]

in the following code I am unable to understand the purpose of @

function get_categories(){
//query database for a list of categories
$conn = db_connect();
$query ="select catid, catname from categories";
$result = @$conn->query($query);
if (!$result){
return false;
}
$num_cats = @$result->num_rows;
if($num_cats==0)
{
return false;
}
$result = db_result_to_array($result);
return false;
}
function db_result_to_array($result)
{
$res_array = array();
for ($count=0; $row = $result->fetch_assoc(); $count++){
	$res_array[$count] = $row;
	}

	return $res_array;
}

[mgoodman]

@ simply suppresses any error messages that $conn->query() may generate.

 

http://us.php.net/manual/en/language.operators.errorcontrol.php

[Pikachu2000]

You should remove it from the code and, with very limited exception, forget it exists unless it's part of an email address.