title: At-Sign in SQL statement before column name
body: <p>I have an INSERT statement in a PHP-file wherein at-signs (@) are occurring in front of the column name.</p>
  
  <p>@field1,
     @field2,</p>
  
  <p>It is a MySQL database. What does the at-sign mean?</p>
  
  <p><strong>Edit:</strong><br>
  There is no  <code>SET @field1 := 'test'</code> in the PHP script. The PHP script reads a csv and puts the data into the table. Can it be misused as a commenting out feature?</p>
  
  <pre><code>&lt;?php
  $typo_db_username = 'xyz';  //  Modified or inserted by TYPO3 Install Tool.
  $typo_db_password = 'xyz';  //  Modified or inserted by TYPO3 Install Tool.
  
  // login
  $_SESSION['host'] = "localhost";
  $_SESSION['port'] = "3306";
  $_SESSION['user'] = $typo_db_username;
  $_SESSION['password'] = $typo_db_password;
  $_SESSION['dbname'] = "database";
  
  
  $cxn = mysqli_connect($_SESSION['host'], $_SESSION['user'], $_SESSION['password'], $_SESSION['dbname'], $_SESSION['port']) or die ("SQL Error:" . mysqli_connect_error() );
  mysqli_query($cxn, "SET NAMES utf8");
  
  $sqltrunc = "TRUNCATE TABLE tablename";
  $resulttrunc = mysqli_query($cxn,$sqltrunc) or die ("Couldn’t execute query: ".mysqli_error($cxn));
  
  $sql1 = "
  LOAD DATA LOCAL
  INFILE 'import.csv'
  REPLACE
  INTO TABLE tablename
  FIELDS
  TERMINATED BY ';'
  OPTIONALLY ENCLOSED BY '\"'
  IGNORE 1 LINES
  (
  `normalField`,
  @field1,
  @field2,
  `normalField2`,
  @field3,
  @field4
  )";
  
  $result1 = mysqli_query($cxn,$sql1) or die ("Couldn’t execute query: " . mysqli_error($cxn));
  
  
  ?&gt;'
  </code></pre>
  
  <p><strong>SOLUTION</strong>:</p>
  
  <p>Finally, I found it out! The @ field is used as dummy to miss out a column in a csv-file. See <a href="http://www.php-resource.de/forum/showthread/t-97082.html" rel="noreferrer">http://www.php-resource.de/forum/showthread/t-97082.html</a>
  http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.0/en/load-data.html</p>