What is the use of @ symbol in php?

Question

I have seen using @ in front of certain functions like following:

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

What is the use of this symbol?

Answer 1

It suppresses errors.

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

Answer 2

It suppresses error messages - see Error Control Operators in the PHP manual.

Answer 3

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