Error message shows up in HTML

I'm trying to trap failed connection attempts to my MySQL database. Here's my code:

if (mysql_connect(host, user, password)) {
// Run a query
} else {
$errmsg = "Database unavailable.";
}

Everything works fine, but what happens is that when the code fails (eg, if the mysql service is not running) I get the failed connection message on my webpage, which I DON'T want. Any ideas?

You can place the @ sign before the function (ie @mysql_connect(foo)) to suppress or change your error reporting level in php.ini