Significance of the @ sign in PHP call.

Question

Hello,

I'm working through some PHP code and cannot figure out what the significance of the @ sign is in this code:

    $data = @fread($_socket, 8192);

I wasn't able to find many other examples on php.net either that explain what @ does, instead it is just used.

Thanks

Answer 1

The @ suppress the error message that would occur if what is on the right-hand of the @ were to fail.

Here's the link to the php.net page that has full details http://php.net/manual/en/language.operators.errorcontrol.php

Answer 2

it's used as a directive to suppress error messages from the call

Answer 3

That's the error control operator, which suppresses error messages.

Answer 4

but it can reduce your code performance