TYPO3 Core

If you have control over the server's installed software, consider downgrading to libxml2-2.6.32. This workaround solves the problem for the moment, and not only for TYPO3, as other projects may be affected, too.

As stated in the bugs linked above, the problem lies deep inside the XML extension of PHP, and needs to be addressed carefully, including some heavy rewriting of the extension core. This usually takes a while until it's included in a new release, and since then, it's better to stick with an older libxml2 version IMHO.

it reminds me to an older php-bug, where core team decided not to fix php-bugs (or workarounds) as these bugs will be hopefully solved with next php release.

Yesterday i stumpled over exactly this problem, after our hoster updated some libs on the system.
i spend a couple of hours debugging the issue and solved it exactly like jeff does in his patch.

Its true: it only solves the issue for flexforms, but not for any other cases where xml2array/xml_parse_into_struct w/o CDATA is used.

For me i would vote +1 for commiting the patch into the core, as it would fix the bug for now and does not break if PHP/libxml solves the problem afterwards. Thus its not a hack/workaround in a sense of "fixing php-bugs" as steffen mentioned.

@jeff: Go for a RFC and we will see what the other core-dev think about it.

i have prepared a minimal example demonstrating the PHP-Bug

$simple = "<root><node><strong>Teststring</strong></node></root>";
$p = xml_parser_create();
xml_parse_into_struct($p, $simple, $vals, $index);
xml_parser_free($p);
echo $vals¹['value'];
?>

correct output ===========
<strong>Teststring</strong>

wrong output (PHP5.2.6/libxml 2.7.1) =============================
strongTeststring/strong

Hey Jeff, you made my day!!!
I found the problem on a site using xmllib 2.6.31, and your patch made it work again! 1000 Thanks!

Jeff, here the same! My extension is working again! Thank you very much!

The error is at the current testing debian release, too:
Debian testing
libxml2/testing uptodate 2.7.3.dfsg-1
php5/testing uptodate 5.2.6.dfsg.1-3

Please include patch in core. Thanks

Committed v4 to trunk, rev 5206