The meaning of @ character in php

Question

I am a newbie in PHP.

I do not know the meaning of @, for example:

$key = @$_REQUEST['key'];

I have searched in google but can not find anything.

Some help me! Please !

It's designed to make debugging your code almost impossible and shooting yourself in the foot really easy. — El Yobo, Sep 14 '11 at 04:06

score 4 · Answer 1 · answered Sep 14 '11 at 04:03

4

The @ symbol tells the function to fail silently instead of dumping some sort of error message. It is listed under error control operators in the PHP manual.

answered Sep 14 '11 at 04:03

Matt Wonlaw

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score 2 · Answer 2 · answered Sep 14 '11 at 04:03

2

It suppresses any errors that the line would normally produce. In this case if the key doesn't exist, an error will occur but the error text will be silenced.

answered Sep 14 '11 at 04:03

Chris Eberle

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score 1 · Answer 3 · answered Sep 14 '11 at 04:03

1

It suppresses errors and warnings.

answered Sep 14 '11 at 04:03

spanky

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score 1 · Answer 4 · answered Sep 14 '11 at 04:04

1

You've found the error control operator!

answered Sep 14 '11 at 04:04

Matt Stephenson

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score 1 · Answer 5 · answered Sep 14 '11 at 04:04

It suppresses warnings in PHP. In that example it could be used to suppress and undefined index warning, if $_REQUEST['key'] doesn't exist. It's usually better practice to write:

$key = isset($_REQUEST['key']) ? $_REQUEST['key'] : 'default value for key here';

The meaning of @ character in php

5 Answers5