'At' symbol before variable name in PHP: @$_POST

Question

I\'ve seen function calls preceded with an at symbol to switch off warnings. Today I was skimming some code and found this:

$hn = @$_POST[\'hn\'];
         


        

Answer 1

All that means is that, if $_POST['hn'] is not defined, then instead of throwing an error or warning, PHP will just assign NULL to $hn.