Currently using Postgresql 7.2.4-5.80 with php 4.2.2.-8.0.8 on a redhat 8.0 system. I am writing some php scripts where I want to generate a list of the column names in a particular table that the user selects. I could take the brute force method and hard code the column names but then every time I add a new table or modify an existing one I would have to modify the code. What I want is to have a generic function that given the table name it will pull the column names for my use. I need to get the table column names for several tables I have setup. I know if I do a select * from tablename I can then use the pg_fieldname function to pull the column names for all columns. But I don't think I want to select the entire contents of the table every time I want to get the names of the columns. I know this will work but I think performance will be very poor. Trying to find something the equivalent of doing a \d tablename in psql. I did see a function to pull meta data but that is in a 4.3 version of php. I have also been trying to track down some information on the pga_layout table. This appears to be a system table that might contain the information I want but it does not list every table I have created. Not sure what that is. The books I have do not say much if anything about such system tables. Any help or pointers would be appreciated. -- Scot L. Harris <webid@cfl.rr.com> ---------------------------(end of broadcast)--------------------------- TIP 3: if posting/reading through Usenet, please send an appropriate subscribe-nomail command to majordomo@postgresql.org so that your message can get through to the mailing list cleanly