What does the @ character do in PHP? [duplicate]

Question

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Reference - What does this symbol mean in PHP?
What does @ mean in PHP?

I have a line in my code which looks like this:

@mysql_select_db($dbname) or die( "Error: Unable to select database");

It works, but I want to know what the @ does and why it is there.

Answer 1

The @ symbol suppresses any errors and notices for the expression it precedes.

See this reference: PHP Error Control Operators

PHP supports one error control operator: the at sign (@). When prepended to an expression in PHP, any error messages that might be generated by that expression will be ignored.