diff --git a/src/llama.cpp b/src/llama.cpp
index 3dfbf792b..1794ec2bd 100644
--- a/src/llama.cpp
+++ b/src/llama.cpp
@@ -5513,7 +5513,8 @@ static void llm_load_vocab(
             }
         }
 
-        if ((token_data.attr & LLAMA_TOKEN_ATTR_USER_DEFINED) && token_data.text.find('<') && token_data.text.rfind('>')) {
+        if ((token_data.attr & LLAMA_TOKEN_ATTR_USER_DEFINED) && !token_data.text.empty() &&
+            token_data.text.front() == '<' && token_data.text.back() == '>') {
             // Some models mark some added tokens which ought to be control tokens as not special.
             // (e.g. command-r, command-r-plus, deepseek-coder)
             // TODO: should this be fixed in the convert script instead?
diff --git a/tests/test-tokenizer-0.cpp b/tests/test-tokenizer-0.cpp
index 0c2d7781b..d3d21331b 100644
--- a/tests/test-tokenizer-0.cpp
+++ b/tests/test-tokenizer-0.cpp
@@ -195,7 +195,7 @@ int main(int argc, char **argv) {
     const bool add_special = false;
 
     for (const auto & test_kv : k_tests) {
-        const std::vector<llama_token> res = llama_tokenize(ctx, test_kv.first, add_special);
+        const std::vector<llama_token> res = llama_tokenize(ctx, test_kv.first, add_special, false);
 
         printf("\n");
         printf("src: '%s'\n", test_kv.first.c_str());
@@ -253,7 +253,7 @@ int main(int argc, char **argv) {
         {
             const auto t_start = ggml_time_us();
 
-            res = llama_tokenize(ctx, text, add_special);
+            res = llama_tokenize(ctx, text, add_special, false);
 
             const auto t_end = ggml_time_us();