title: Why do integers in database row tuple have an 'L' suffix?
body: <p>My question is why do a MySQL row's integer values have an 'L' suffix? Here are the details:</p>
  
  <p>The following dictionary -- artificially formatted here for ease of display --</p>
  
  <pre><code>{'estimated': '', 
   'suffix': '', 
   'typeofread': 'g', 
    'acct_no': 901001000L, 
    'counter': 0, 
    'time_billed': datetime.datetime(2012, 5, 1, 9, 5, 33), 
    'date_read': datetime.datetime(2012, 3, 13, 23, 19, 45), 
    'reading': 3018L, 
    'meter_num': '26174200'}
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>is comprised of a MySQL database table's columns zipped with the result of reading once from the table.</p>
  
  <p>I can remove the 'L' by passing these values into int(), so if that dictionary were in a variable named snapped_read, I could do this:</p>
  
  <p><code>int(snapped_read['reading'])</code> and <code>3018L</code> would change to <code>3018</code>.</p>
  
  <p>I'm just curious as to why integers show up this way.</p>