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no validation is made, that it's a valid XML (e.g. placing "&" instead of "&" won't break anything
the XML is treated like a regular string and therefore typical XML errors (e.g. pair tag name mismatch) are simply ignored
when unknown XML settings are added developer isn't informed about that, which can lead to code working in unexpected ways

Solution

The plan below would allow separate all template comment related logic into one class and allow addition of new settings later if needed.

create the "TemplateCommentParser" class, that:
1. would accept path to template as constructor argument
2. the "parse" method would return associative array of results
add support for data types in the class:
1. "string" - any string
2. "boolean" - true (when "yes"), false (when "no"), exception otherwise
3. "integer" - as-as, when a positive integer, exception otherwise
4. "category_path" - would split value by "||" and trim each each element
define supported settings and their data types as class properties
when template doesn't exist throw an exception
when no meta comment found, then return an empty array
when meta comment found:
1. if it's one line long, then return an empty array
2. if it's invalid XML, then throw an exception
3. when unsupported setting found, then throw an exception
4. when supported setting found, but it has value unknown format, then throw an exception
return parsing result