Attached below is a brief summary of ICU's number parsing behaviour (data collected using ICU4C 49.1.2)

The following data will be parsed successfully regardless of the pattern or strict/lenient parsing mode


Grouping separators are only permitted in the data, if specified in the pattern


When in STRICT mode the following will cause a parse failure (using a pattern of  "#,##0.#")
        z12 will parse successfully, 12 will only parse successfully in lenient mode.

Regards

Richard
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