Most efficient report of number of records in all tables?

["D. Dante Lorenso" <dante@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

All,

I can find the names of all tables in the database with this query:

   SELECT table_name
   FROM information_schema.tables
   WHERE table_type = 'BASE TABLE'
   AND table_schema NOT IN ('pg_catalog', 'information_schema')
   ORDER BY table_name ASC;


Then, in code, I can loop through all the table names and run the 
following query:

   SELECT COUNT(*) AS result
   FROM $table;


But, this can be slow when I have a large number of tables of some 
tables have several million rows.

Is there a faster way to get this data using table statistics or 
something like that?  Perhaps something in a single query?

-- Dante