MySQL - first program - question about returned data

I wrote my first MySQL program in C last night. Seems to work pretty good.

However, for about 30 minutes, I was stuck attempting to output the returned data. I have a simple table

CREATE TABLE dbname.tbname (col1 INTEGER NOT NULL) ;

I inserted 50 rows in a loop and then selected the data:

SELECT * FROM dbname.tbname ORDER BY col1 ;

Upon fetching the rows,

Code:

---

        // Get the handle for the result table
       
        result_set = mysql_use_result(mysql) ;

        if (!result_set) {
                fprintf(stderr, "use_result failed.  Error: %d, %s\n",
                        mysql_errno(mysql), mysql_error(mysql) ) ; 
                return -1 ;
        }
        else {
                printf("Use Result worked!\n") ;
        }
       
        numcols = mysql_num_fields(result_set) ;
        printf("There are %d columns in the result table.\n", numcols );

        while  ( row = mysql_fetch_row(result_set) ) {
                for ( i = 0 ; i < numcols ; i++) {
                        printf("Row %d value = %s\n", i+1, row[i] );
                }
        }

---

I was expecting to get the data back in an integer field, but MySQL decided to convert the numeric data to strings! What's up with that? Is there an option, perhaps, to have it not do that?

Thanks

AFAIK it will return data in the form of strings, you can always use sscanf() to parse the data as an integer.

Yes, that is indeed the case. I found this PDF: http://www.kitebird.com/mysql-book/ch06-2ed.pdf, and document page 356 explains the MYSQL_ROW interface.

It appears I can prepare the statement though, and then get the raw data. Cool. Thanks.