Error: Name cannot begin with the '<' character, hexadecimal value 0x3C. Line 91, position 5.

Question

_{Friday, January 29, 2016 3:02 PM}

This error is appearing in my Entity Data Model Output window.  The problem is that it doesn't tell me what file it's talking about, so I can't figure out how to fix this.  Any ideas?

This is in VS2012.  We use Entity Framework 4 (I think)

I've tried printing line 91 of my edmx files, but they all look fine.  I've tried searching for the string 'Name="<', but it's not found.

All replies (5)

_{Wednesday, February 3, 2016 6:10 PM ✅Answered | 1 vote}

Hi Lake Xiao,

Sorry, it was easy to fix.  It was just some corrupt XML in one of my projects' App.config causing the problem.  I guess it didn't get merged properly after a conflict and there were some lines missing from a couple of the connection string entries.  I just deleted them because the connection strings kind of proliferate over time and most of them are meaningless (we have about 20-30 or them in there).  I'm not sure if I can clean them out or not without breaking something.  But anyway, I'm no longer getting that error.

Thanks for the reply,

Matt

_{Friday, January 29, 2016 5:31 PM}

Search all of your files for “<<<”. Sometimes these symbols area inserted after faulty merge operation in case of versioning systems (https://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/vstudio/en-US/6648f36f-e8e0-4321-b3a9-c647b5be8a57).

_{Tuesday, February 2, 2016 2:01 PM}

Search all of your files for “<<<”. Sometimes these symbols area inserted after faulty merge operation in case of versioning systems (https://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/vstudio/en-US/6648f36f-e8e0-4321-b3a9-c647b5be8a57).

Thanks for reply.  I searched the whole solution, but it wasn't found.

Ah!  I just looked in the Error List tab and it told me what the file is in there!  It turned out to be an app.config file.  Not sure how I missed that.

_{Wednesday, February 3, 2016 5:16 AM}

Hi,

Could you please tell me what's the type of your project and when did you get this error?

I did a research for this error. And I found a similar thread. Please take a look at it:

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2282467/name-cannot-begin-with-the-character

>>It turned out to be an app.config file.  Not sure how I missed that.

If the error is pointing to this config file. I think there is something wrong with your app.config file.

Please share us the detailed content in your app.config file so that we could troubleshoot it.

Best Regards,

Lake Xiao

_{Thursday, February 4, 2016 1:25 AM}

Hi Matt,

Thanks for sharing the results here and glad to hear the error is gone.

If possible, please mark the reply as the answer which is helpful, so it would be helpful for other members who get the same issue as yours to research and find the answer directly, and I could close this case.

Have a nice day.

Best Regards,

Lake Xiao