+ means that this identifier will be added to the resources. You declare that it exists somewhere and use it simultaneously. Not sure if this really applies to strings, but I think it does. This explains why you are not getting errors.
And I doubt it is useful to use + to make it work. You can get a string declaration without the actual contents of the string, which is likely to crash.
If it does not work without + , try creating / updating a project. If the string is defined in one of your xml files, you can use @string
zapl
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