title: Does the MySQLdb module in python returns utf8 encoding or unicode in this case?
body: <p>Using MySQLdb I connect to a database where everything is stored in the utf8 encoding.</p>
  
  <p>If I do</p>
  
  <pre><code>cursor.execute("SET NAMES utf8")
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>and fetch some data from the database by another statement. Does that mean, that the strings in</p>
  
  <pre><code>cursor.execute("SELECT ...")
  cursor.fetchall()
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>will be in unicode? Or do I have to turn them first by</p>
  
  <pre><code>mystr.decode("utf8")
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>to unicode?</p>