"@" symbol in PHP, what does it mean?

i feel so silly asking this, since I've been using PHP for over a year now, but this has always baffled me.
i notice sometmes functions are called with "@' in front of them -
E.g. $somevar = @mail($to,$subject,$msg);

Googling for anything with "@" in the search is pretty much useless. could someone PLEASE enlighten me as to when or why you'd need to call a function with @??

Supresses error reporting.

doh said:

Supresses error reporting.

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ahhhhhh.. so that's it!!! many thanks!! i'll be able to sleep well tonight now

Thank you