no need for additional method. unset() performs deletions

Sorry, i forgot to write that this is about nodes selected by xpath ;-)
Yeah, i know, so lame of me.

<?php
$xml = simplexml_load_string('<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<root>
<recipes>
<recipe>
	<id>1</id>
</recipe>
<recipe>
	<id>2</id>
</recipe>
</recipes>
</root>');
print_r($xml);

$node = $xml->xpath('recipes/recipe[id="1"]');
$foo = &$node[0];

unset($node[0]);
$node[0] = null;

unset($foo);
$foo = null;

print_r($xml);
?>

print_r gives same result before and after unset or setting node to null. It's because only the reference, not content of reference, is unset().

There's no way to delete (or no way that i could thought about) to delete node selected by xpath.