Custom cell formatting

[melburn]

I am puzzled at to why Display or hide zero values - Excel defines 0;-0;;@, as the Custom format for cells to display zero as an empty cell.

The '@,' suffix serves no obvious purpose, the zero cells display empty with or without it.

The page at Excel custom number formats | Exceljet defines @ as "Placeholder for text", but there is no description about how one can make use of it. The example given does not help because in the tests I ran, text in a numeric cell displayed in blue both with and without the @.

- What does the @ contribute to a cell display?
- What purpose does the trailing comma serve?