I am calling SimpleExpression.ignoreCase() on a list of criterion; some of these criterion have values that are Strings, and others have values with non-String data types such as Integers. It appears that after I call SimpleExpression.ignoreCase(), the non-String values are being converted to Strings. The issue is that this is causing a problem later on down the line where a function is expecting these criterion to have the original data types. So my question is this: is this the way ignoreCase is intended to work? And is there any way to use ignoreCase or something similar that doesn't change the value data types? (Currently, the best solution I can think of is simply to check to see if each criterion is a string type, and if it is, only then call ignoreCase. However, in the particular class I was wanting to do this in, I don't have easy access to the data type of each criterion).