title: h5py: convert numpy data to native python types
body: <p>I am saving some data to HDF5 file via h5py. They are mixed-types data, some are proper numpy arrays, many are scalars or strings. Scalars and strings get "encoded" to numpy arrays by h5py automatically (that is very nice), but I would like to do the reverse now: when reading those data, get it converted to native python type, instead of seeing scalars as 0d shapes, strings as <code>&lt;HDF5 dataset "plots": shape (), type "|S207"&gt;</code> and such.</p>
  
  <p>Is there an easy way to achieve that, without me having to check for array dtype manually?</p>
  
  <p>It is fine that an extra object will be created for every conversion.</p>