Suppress error with @ operator in PHP

In your opinion, is it ever valid to use the @ operator to suppress an error/warning in PHP whereas you may be handling the error?

If so, in what circumstances would you use this?

Code examples are welcome.

Edit: Note to repliers. I'm not looking to turn error reporting off, but, for example, common practice is to use

@fopen($file);

and then check afterwards... but you can get rid of the @ by doing

if (file_exists($file))
{
    fopen($file);

}
else
{
    die('File not found');
}

or similar.

I guess the question is - is there anywhere that @ HAS to be used to supress an error, that CANNOT be handled in any other manner?

Answer

I would suppress the error and handle it. Otherwise you may have a TOCTOU issue (Time-of-check, time-of-use. For example a file may get deleted after file_exists returns true, but before fopen).

But I wouldn't just suppress errors to make them go away. These better be visible.