I have been able to produce a similar problem, but I'm not sure if it's exactly the same bug or a variant of this one.

-----[ XML Field ]-----
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<test>
 <fields>
  <myField>a</myField>
  <myField>b</myField>
  <myField>c</myField>
 </fields>
</test>

-----[ Script ]-----
#!/usr/local/bin/php -q
<?php

 $sx = simplexml_load_file("_example.xml");

 print_r($sx);

 for ($i = 0; $i < count($sx->fields->myField); $i++)
 {
    $v = $sx->fields->myField[$i];

    print "True Value: {$v}\n";
    $tmp[] = $v;
    $tmp2[] = "$v";

 }

 print "Trying to view 'tmp' array:\n\n";
 print_r($tmp);

 print "Trying to view 'tmp2' array:\n\n";
 print_r($tmp2);

?>

-----[ Output ]-----
simplexml_element Object
(
    [fields] => simplexml_element Object
        (
            [myField] => Array
                (
                    [0] => a
                    [1] => b
                    [2] => c
                )

        )

)
True Value: a
True Value: b
True Value: c
Trying to view 'tmp' array:

Array
(
    [0] => simplexml_element Object
        (
        )

    [1] => simplexml_element Object
        (
        )

    [2] => simplexml_element Object
        (
        )

)
Trying to view 'tmp2' array:

Array
(
    [0] => a
    [1] => b
    [2] => c
)

-----[ PHP Version Info ]-----
PHP 5.0.0b2 (cli) (built: Dec  7 2003 18:04:51)
Copyright (c) 1997-2003 The PHP Group
Zend Engine v2.0.0-dev, Copyright (c) 1998-2003 Zend Technologies
    with Turck MMCache v2.4.6, Copyright (c) 2002-2003 TurckSoft, St. Petersburg, by Dmitry Stogov


I tried the latest CVS, at the time of this posting, and it would not build because of a mysqli compile problem.

Thank you for taking the time to write to us, but this is not
a bug. Please double-check the documentation available at
http://www.php.net/manual/ and the instructions on how to report
a bug at http://bugs.php.net/how-to-report.php

A property access returns the element (as an object).
Using __tostring() or conversion by (string) returns the text content. If an element contains multiple elements of the same name then accessing those by proeprty returns an array of eleemnt objects. So all is fine.

This bug was not "bogus" - assignments did not work, nor did printing. There now seems to be some implicit string conversions that fix that. Which is fine, I guess.

It's still very odd, at the least, that a property access returns an empty object. Nothing else works like this. If it's intentional, it's a very peculiar and questionable intention.

Run this code:
<?php
$xml = '<wrapper><foo>s1</foo><bar>s2</bar><bar>s3</bar></wrapper>';
$t = simplexml_load_string($xml);
$x = new stdClass;
$x->foo = 's1';
$x->bar = array('s2','s3');
var_dump($t,$t->foo,$t->bar);
var_dump($x,$x->foo,$x->bar);
?>

and you really think the results are "fine"?? Whatever.

That word, "bogus", is like pissing on the people entering bugs. (Ask a native English speaker what they would think you meant if you called something they did "bogus".) If you'd rather just have a broken product, then why allow bug entries at all?

The word bogus may be bogus but hey that's an automatic reply - sorry if you get pissed of by an autoreply.

The objects are empty because they only use dynamic properties and do not declare any objects. Those properties can be seen as if they were handled by __get() and __set() in user defined classes.