Ask HN: Purpose of the AT operator in PHP?

I've been using PHP for well over a decade now and I always remembered the use of the @ operator being a last resort against "noisy" modules that would throw spurious warnings/errors that could be safely ignored. Those days have long gone (or have they?) .. but @ remains as far as I can tell for backwards compatibility.

Anyway, after seeing it come up as part of many arguments against PHP and realising it is actually used by developers in everyday error handling! I've tried to find a reference to it's correct use in the docs, source and web but to no avail.

Does anyone else remember it as I do, or is this just a figment of my imagination.