[FAQ] What does @ (at-sign) do?

Carved in mystic runes upon the very living rock, the last words of John
Dunlop of comp.lang.php make plain:

[ This is just a start. I hope somebody will follow up with
more suggestions. Particularly: Is 'at-sign' the best
name? How about the Unicode name 'COMMERCIAL AT'? Does
'error messages' include notices and warnings? What should
the example be? ]

Q: What does @ (at-sign) do?

A: @ is an operator, which, when prepended to an expression,
suppresses error messages.

Example:

[example here]

http://www.php.net/manual/en/languag...rorcontrol.php

Example:

$x = 'a';
extract($x);
@extract($x);

I like this idea. There are a number of things like this that a person
might come across in someone else's code, for example, that are difficult
to look up in the docs without knowing what they are.

--
Alan Little
Phorm PHP Form Processor
http://www.phorm.com/

John Dunlop wrote:

[ This is just a start. I hope somebody will follow up with
more suggestions. Particularly: Is 'at-sign' the best
name? How about the Unicode name 'COMMERCIAL AT'? Does
'error messages' include notices and warnings? What should
the example be? ]

Q: What does @ (at-sign) do?

A: @ is an operator, which, when prepended to an expression,
suppresses error messages.

Example:

[example here]

http://www.php.net/manual/en/languag...rorcontrol.php

turns off error messages - don't use it for development environments, do
use it for production environments

NSpam wrote:

turns off error messages - don't use it for development environments, do
use it for production environments

Good point.

--
Jock

Alan Little wrote:

Example:

$x = 'a';
extract($x);
@extract($x);
Great!
I like this idea. There are a number of things like this that a person
might come across in someone else's code, for example, that are difficult
to look up in the docs without knowing what they are.

Yes, that's why I think what we call @ is important. If you
were searching for @ on Google, what would you call it?

Here's some results:

"at-sign"
316 000 hits

commercial at"
97 500 hits

"commercial at sign"
1 730 hits

'Commercial at sign', though not as common, covers those
three possibilities, but it does sound a bit stilted,
doesn't it? The AUE FAQ says it's the longest name for @.

http://www.alt-usage-english.org/excerpts/fxnameso.html

The Jargon File 4.4.7 says:

| @
| Common: at sign; at; strudel. Rare: each; vortex; whorl;
| [whirlpool]; cyclone; snail; ape; cat; rose; cabbage;
| <commercial at>.

http://catb.org/~esr/jargon/html/A/ASCII.html

And if you're really interested, /A Natural History of the @
Sign/:

http://www.herodios.com/herron_tc/atsign.html

--
Jock

"NSpam" <ch*********@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:km*******************@fe1.news.blueyonder.co. uk...

John Dunlop wrote:

[ This is just a start. I hope somebody will follow up with
more suggestions. Particularly: Is 'at-sign' the best
name? How about the Unicode name 'COMMERCIAL AT'? Does
'error messages' include notices and warnings? What should
the example be? ]

Q: What does @ (at-sign) do?

A: @ is an operator, which, when prepended to an expression,
suppresses error messages.

Example:

[example here]

http://www.php.net/manual/en/languag...rorcontrol.php

turns off error messages - don't use it for development environments, do
use it for production environments

Actually, the @ sign is mostly useful only during development, when the
level of error reporting is high. In a typical production environment either
error messages are turned off over all.