def get_py3_string_type(h_node):
    """ Helper function to return the python string type for items in a list.

    Notes:
        Py3 string handling is a bit funky and doesn't play too nicely with HDF5.
        We needed to add metadata to say if the strings in a list started off as
        bytes, string, etc. This helper loads

    """
    try:
        py_type = h_node.attrs['py3_string_type'][0]
        return py_type
    except:
        return None
