Handling errors and continuing execution in PHP script

Question

I don't want to "die()" when it concerns only a small part of the script and I tried:

$result = mysql_query($sql) or echo("error with responses");

But it generated an error. How do I just give out an error message and continue to execute the rest of the script since even if it fails to connect, the rest should not be affected.

Answer 1

$result = mysql_query($sql);
if(mysql_error()) {
  echo "Error: " . mysql_error();
}