Storing ints using HSET in redis

Question

I am using redis to store some numeric values using HSET. Here is an example command I am using

HSET "abc" "field" 123

I'm expecting this to store an integer, but when I do HGETALL, it turns out to be a string:

1) "field"
2) "123"

My two questions are:

1. Is there any way to store an integer in redis using HSET?
2. Is there any space saving benefit of doing so?

Answer 1

From http://redis.io/topics/protocol#integer-reply:

The following commands will reply with an integer reply: SETNX, DEL, EXISTS, INCR, INCRBY, DECR, DECRBY, DBSIZE, LASTSAVE, RENAMENX, MOVE, LLEN, SADD, SREM, SISMEMBER, SCARD.

The reply for HSET is a string, but it doesn't mean that Redis stored your info as such.

From http://redis.io/topics/memory-optimization

Since Redis 2.2 many data types are optimized to use less space up to a certain size. Hashes, Lists, Sets composed of just integers, and Sorted Sets, when smaller than a given number of elements, and up to a maximum element size, are encoded in a very memory efficient way that uses up to 10 times less memory (with 5 time less memory used being the average saving).

Also in this page there are commands to configure Redis to set threshold for that optimization.