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?