simplexml_load_file accept an optional third operator since 5.1.x .
Since this is a rare occurrence (user running mediawiki from svn
with php 5.0.x), I am marking it as WONTFIX.

To solve the problem, upgrade to a 5.1.x php.

ayg wrote:

I thought we were currently avoiding 5.1 dependencies in core code.

Restored to original version in r21629; unclear why Nick added the 5.1 dependency.

nickpj wrote:

The answer is simply that I was not aware that I had added the 5.1 dependency.
My apologies, and thank you for reverting.

I would personally quite like 5.1.0 as the baseline because of entirely separate
reasons (5.0 has some corruption bugs, is unmaintained, has restrictions on the
usefulness of type hinting, etc), but I feel even more strongly that any such
change should be agreed upon, intentional, explicit, announced clearly, and not
affect 1.10 (given the proximity to release).