table column information

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(at)cfl(dot)rr(dot)com>