This came up in code review at work in context of PHP and @ operator. However I want to try keep this in more generic form, since few question about it I found on SO got bogged down in technical specifics.

Accessing array field, which is not set, results in error message and is commonly handled by following logic (pseudo code):

if field value is set
   output field value

Code in question was doing it like:

start ignoring errors
output field value
stop ignoring errors

The reasoning for latter was that it's more compact and readable code in this specific case. I feel that those benefits do not justify misuse (IMO) of language mechanics.

• Is such code is being "clever" in a bad way?

• Is discarding possible error (for any reason) acceptable practice over explicitly handling it (even if that leads to more extensive and/or intensive code)?

• Is it acceptable for programming operators to cross boundaries of intended use (like in this case using error handling for controlling output)?

Edit

I wanted to keep it more generic, but specific code being discussed was like this:

if ( isset($array['field']) ) {
    echo '<li>' . $array['field'] . '</li>';
}

vs the following example:

echo '<li>' . @$array['field'] . '</li>';