Data types returned from MySQL query

[Black_Knight]

I recently noticed some surprising behaviour by PHP/MySQL.
I have a table in a MySQL database with columns of type DECIMAL(4,2).

I use a query to select these values:

$result = mysql_query('SELECT * from tbl');
$details = mysql_fetch_array($result);

Then when I do a var_dump of the returned data - var_dump($details), I found that all the data was of string type!
Why is this? I would expect columns of type DECIMAL to go to floats in PHP?
Do I really have to cast them to the type I require?

Thanks

[planetsim]

You dont have to cast in PHP, although its a good habit to get into. You could keep it as a string and still perform calculations on it as if it were a float or type double. I personally dont think a decimal would be best used as float. Also since decimal isnt a data type within PHP it guesses and goes for the most likely. Since there really arent data types in PHP its assumed to be a String. The only one it gets right is Integers.

[Black_Knight]

Very interesting, thanks. I see that MySQL floats also go to PHP strings!