C-API: unclear description to mysql_fetch_row

[d.hentrich]

Hi,

for a small project I'm using the C-API to fetch some data from the DB. The Documentation itself says nothing about the returned data in MYSQL_ROW.
When I watch the content of the result in the debugger it seems that the API returns all data as string, even the ones defined as integer in the table. For me this is very inefficient, because after converting the integer into string (by mysql) I have to convert it back to integer in my client application to actually use it.

Additionaly the documentation is talking about binary data which might be located in the result. Is this binary data only possible with blobs or is there a way to find definitly the representation of data (string/integer/float)?

Dierk