title: Severe: Parse error in application web.xml
body: <p>I am trying to teach myself Java, Java EE, and Tomcat pretty much all at once.<br>
  (Experienced C/Obj-C dev)</p>
  
  <p>I was following a tutorial at YouTube at: <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bd50C6XUnFw" rel="nofollow">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bd50C6XUnFw</a></p>
  
  <p>I am running:</p>
  
  <ul>
  <li>Apache Tomcat/7.0.47</li>
  <li>JVM 1.7.0_45-b18</li>
  <li>Mac OS X 10.8.5 x86_64</li>
  </ul>
  
  <p>The error I'm seeing is: </p>
  
  <pre><code>SEVERE: Parse error in application web.xml file at jndi:/localhost/FirstServlet/WEB-INF/web.xml
  org.xml.sax.SAXParseException; systemId: jndi:/localhost/FirstServlet/WEB-INF/web.xml; lineNumber: 8; columnNumber: 19; Error at (8, 19) : Can't convert argument: null
      at org.apache.tomcat.util.digester.Digester.createSAXException(Digester.java:2687)
      at org.apache.tomcat.util.digester.Digester.createSAXException(Digester.java:2719)
      at org.apache.tomcat.util.digester.Digester.endElement(Digester.java:1054)
      at com.sun.org.apache.xerces.internal.parsers.AbstractSAXParser.endElement(AbstractSAXParser.java:609)
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>As shown in the video the web.xml (at path <code>/Library/Tomcat/webapps/firstservlet/WEB-INF</code>) is:</p>
  
  <pre class="lang-xml prettyprint-override"><code>&lt;web-app&gt;
      &lt;servlet&gt;
          &lt;servlet-name&gt;My FirstServlet&lt;/servlet-name&gt;
          &lt;servlet-class&gt;FirstServlet&lt;/servlet-class&gt;
      &lt;/servlet&gt;
      &lt;servlet-mapping&gt;
          &lt;url-pattern&gt;/myfirstservlet&lt;/url-pattern&gt;
      &lt;/servlet-mapping&gt;
  &lt;/web-app&gt;
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>The error indicates that the issue is a null it's hitting after the <code>&lt;/servlet-mapping&gt;</code></p>
  
  <p>So my only assumption is that the tutorial on YouTube is missing something and I must be missing an argument. Suggestions strongly welcomed.</p>