On Tue, March 20, 2007 11:08 am, Ford, Mike wrote:
>> what do you want with that '@' here?
>> that operator can be used to suppress error messages when calling
>> functions but not when using a variable

This is most definitely way wrong.

> What complete tosh! @ is a unary operator, so can be applied to any
> expression.
>
> Proof:
>
> <?php
> echo "no @ --", $HTTP_GET_VARS['bogus'], "<br />\n";
> echo "with @ --", @$HTTP_GET_VARS['bogus'], "<br />\n";
> ?>
>
> Result:
>
> no @ --
> Warning: Undefined index: bogus in
> c:\www-lco\scripts_etc\lco\php\test.php on line 18
>
> with @ --
>
>
> Also:
>
> <?php
> $a = 123;
> echo "no @ --", $a/0, "<br />\n";
> echo "with @ --", @($a/0), "<br />\n";
> ?>
>
> Result:
>
> no @ --
> Warning: Division by zero in c:\www-lco\scripts_etc\lco\php\test.php
> on line 19
>
> with @ --
>
>
> Not that I'm necessarily advocating this as a technique, but let's not
> spread disinformation!

While it has now been proven that @ is "more" than a function
error-suppressant, I suspect it may technically be a Language
Construct rather than a simple unary operator...

Not that I can come up with anything yet to prove it, as all my
examples so far were total syntax errors...

Although I did find an interesting anomoly...

What would you expect this to output?
<?php @ ?>

Hint:
I figured it would apply the @ to no expression at all and do nothing.
I was wrong.

I suppose I could try to read PHP source and figure all this out
someday...

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