Name cannot begin with the ' ' character

Question

I\'m parsing some XML in C#. I\'m getting it from a database, and so converting it to a MemoryStream before reading it with an XmlTextReader. The problem is that I get this

Answer 1

Another common source of this error is when the XmlReader attempts to read your scripts as xml. That's a good reason to start commenting out scripts after the script tags. They will still run:

<script language="javascript" type="text/javascript">
<!--
    function myFunction() {
    }
    ...
-->
</script>

Answer 2

Yes, you should delete the space between <? and xml.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
<form>
   <e order="0" type="custom" name="test">
      <fi type="text" />
      <o />
   </e>
   <e order="1" type="zip" />
   <e order="2" type="state" />
</form>

Here's the relevant XML spec.

Answer 3

My error in same case was that file wasn't saved as UTF-8.