What is the purpose of using the "@" symbol before a PHP function?

Using the "@" symbol before a PHP function suppresses any errors or warnings that may be generated by that function. This can be useful in situations where you want to prevent error messages from being displayed to the user or logged in the error log. However, it is generally considered bad practice to use the "@" symbol as it can make debugging more difficult.

// Example of using "@" symbol before a PHP function to suppress errors
$result = @some_function();