"@" symbol on "include" directive

@deck42Apr 14.2009

Hello,

I am using an “autoload” function to load the necessary files. Since it does some trying around it is very likely that some of the “includes” it performs will fail. And since I do not want any notice on that, I put an “@” sign in front of the corresponding “include” directive.
Everything is nice so far, the “file not found” notice is suppressed. BUT, funny enough, it seems that all error messages in the included file are being suppressed too !
Very annoying, does anyone know about this?

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@scragarApr 14.2009 — #Wouldn't the easiest method be to test if the [url=http://php.net/file_exists]file_exists[/url] or [url=http://php.net/is_readable]is_readable[/url] first?

@deck42authorApr 14.2009 — #Yes, that would be a workaround.. I will perhaps end up doing that but still I am curious if the problem I have is known to exist or just some weird bug that can't be (easily) reproduced.

@scragarApr 14.2009 — #It's not a bug, @ is the error suppression operand, it, unfortunately, operates recursively, applying not just to the call it is used on, but any children.

For reference I wrote this function I while ago for the purposes of my own code:

[code=php]function inc($f, $p=false){
 if(substr($f, 1, 1) == '/'){ // absolute path
 if( ! file_exists($f) || ! is_readable($f))
 return false;
 include $f;
 return true;
 }
 if($p === false)
 $p = explode(':', ini_get('include_path'));
 if(!is_array($p))
 $p = array($p);
 foreach($p as $i){
 if(file_exists($i.DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR.$f) && is_readable($i.DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR.$f)){
 include $i.DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR.$f;
 return true;
 }
 }
 return false;
 }
 
 
 // USAGE:
 if( inc('file.php'))
 echo 'file exists';
 else
 echo "file doesn't exist";[/code]

I have never had the chance to test this on a windows system, but I don't think the first part will work, since windows absolute paths don't look like that, I assume a fix however would look rather ugly.

@deck42authorApr 14.2009 — #Alright thanks for the answer!

@NogDogApr 14.2009 — #In most cases "@" is a poor solution to whatever problem it is being applied. In the vast majority of cases a bit more in the way of defensive programming will remove the need for it, and proper setting of the display_errors configuration (i.e.: it should be turned off) in the production version will obviate its use in any case. So instead of considering a file_exists()/is_readable() check to be a work-around, I would instead consider it to be good programming.

(I have been known to use "@" in a few places such as mysql_connect() calls where I don't want to risk having my database login credentials displayed should it fail and display_errors is turned on for some reason.)

"@" symbol on "include" directive

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