When the streams API raises the error, it first strips username / password information from the path, making the error message safe to display in the browser.
If this flag is set, and there was an error during the opening of the file or URL, the streams API will call the php_error function for you. This is useful because the path may contain username/password information that should not be displayed in the browser output (it would be a security risk to do so). When the streams API raises the error, it first strips username/password information from the path, making the error message safe to display in the browser.