In response to his introduction of the non-well-formed XML patch the other day, Christian Stocker has a new posting with a bit of a rebuttal on the subject.

My patch from the other day to allow parsing of non-well-formed XML documents in PHP 5.1 seemed to cause some disagreement, if that should be done at all (see the comments).

I agree [...] completely. Don't use this feature on a regular basis or even by default. Fix the other side if you can or simply just reject it. But if you use it, use it carefully and only when you really know what you are doing. And validate the XML after it was "recovered".

It seems to me like this patch can really go either way. Some see it as a powerful tool to use as a last minute resort, and others vehemently oppose it, suggesting it "promotes sloppy XML".