Different behavior when loading alphanumeric fields between versions of Qlik Engine

The customer has just updated their QlikView Server to QV12 and have come across following behaviour: Fields with ‘1+’, ‘2+’ or ‘3+’ get brought in without the symbol (+). You can reproduce it with the below load, load it in 11.2 and 12.1 and the difference is obvious. 

What they have also noticed is that fields with a number and +/-/= after are now being considered as numeric, even if the symbol is retained. In 12.1 those values are loaded as numeric while in 11.2 those were loaded as text. 

You would be able to replicate the problem using the script below. 

Fat_map: 

Mapping 

Load * inline [ 

mapfrom, mapto 

3-,3L 

4-,4L 

5-,5L 

3+,3H 

4+,4H 

5+,5H 

]; 

Kill: 

Load * inline [ 

Tag, Fat 

001,1 

002,2 

003,3 

004,4+ 

005,4H 

006,5+ 

007,3+ 

008,3- 

009,3 

010,2+ 

011,1+ 

012,1 

013,1- 

014,1+ 

015,6+ 

016,7+ 

017,1+ 

]; 

killtmp: 

Load *, 

ApplyMap('Fat_map', Fat) as mapFat, 

text(Fat) as textfat 

Resident Kill; 

drop Table Kill;

Environments:

• QlikView - 12.10 and up
• Qlik Sense - 3.2 and up

1. The change observed between QV 11.20 and QV 12.10 is related to smart parsing. Smart parsing was introduced to Qlik Engine since QV 12.10.

2. Smart parsing means that if during the load Qlik Engine stumbles upon for example a string the value 3+ is understood as 3+0 which means the returned value will be 3 if you wrap it in the text function.

3. Following this logic a change was made as that if the Qlik Engine stumbles upon first a value which is a number "3" then it will treat the consecutive values as numbers. It will return 3+ if there isnt't any preceeding 3.