sqlite - Python sqlite3 extra character in queries result -

so trying run simple query in python using sqlite try out . result of query right, "u" @ beginning of each text field , not sure why. here code:

import sqlite3  db = sqlite3.connect(':memory:') c = db.cursor()  c.execute("create table students (id integer primary key autoincrement, fn text, ln text);")  c.execute("insert students (fn,ln) values ('firstname','lastname');")  c.execute("select * students")  in c:     print(i) 

and here result get:

(1, u'firstname', u'lastname')  process finished exit code 0 

any clue why happens ?

in python source code, unicode literals written strings prefixed u or u character.

if don't want word became unicode can encode unicode-escape:

>>> s.encode('unicode-escape') 'firstname'