Question

I saw a piece of code from a website which is in php. In that code variable are written @ symbol at front what does that mean
eg :

@hello = “hi”;

Answer 1

The @ is error suppression operator in PHP.

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.

EDIT:

Typical usage include the following:

<?php
// Usage of the @ symbol in PHP code

// Typical Example
$var = @some_function();

// Class/Object Example
$var = @new some_class();

// Does NOT Work!
//$var = new @some_class(); // syntax error

// Another example. Very slow
$var = @$some_var;

?>

See the following links:

http://php.net/manual/en/language.operators.errorcontrol.php

http://michelf.com/weblog/2005/bad-uses-of-the-at-operator/