WordPress use of @ in core files

The @ in header comments is the PHP Documentor meta data style.

This syntax allow you to specify different kind of information:

  • package and subpackage with @package and @subpackage allow you to define what is the context for the current file (used for PHP 5.3 namespaces like in the Java syntax)
  • author with @author, copyright with @copyright and licence with @licence to specify how can be used the given source code
  • description with @description and version with @version to follow library details
  • deprecated with @deprecated to prevent API modifications

Here the PHP Documentor reference: http://www.phpdoc.org/docs/latest/for-users/phpdoc-reference.html

These comments are also used by wordpress to extract and import meta data as you can see in the style.css file of your studied theme but it’s not the same syntax (only labels and colon without @)