title: Show table structure and list of tables in PostgreSQL
body: <p>I had employed MySQL for a couple of former projects. But now have 
  decided to switch to PostgreSQL. Not that version 8 also works on that, 
  ahem other OS which I'm stuck with at work.</p>
  
  <p>But alas, two of the most useful commands appear to be missing:</p>
  
  <ul>
  <li><code>SHOW TABLES</code></li>
  <li><code>DESCRIBE table</code></li>
  </ul>
  
  <p>Inasmuch as my prototyping DB is on my NetBSD server at home while my 
  data waiting to be 'based is at work, such that I have to connect via 
  Perl/DBI and XML-RPC (not psql, alas). The IT dept here just says, "Use 
  MS-Access", so no help there.</p>
  
  <p>While I'm in the initial stage I need an informative way to blunder 
  around and see what's what as I try different ways to build this thing. 
  For that I had always relied on the two above from MySQL.</p>
  
  <p>I can't believe there is no way for PostgreSQL to tell me what the 
  current DB's table structure is via simple SQL queries executed remotely.</p>
  
  <p>Surely there must be. But I can't seem to find out from the couple of 
  books I have. All I dug up was some ultra-lame hack to get column names 
  for an already known table name by doing a "WHERE 1 != 1" or some such 
  so that no actual rows could be returned. Not very informative, that. 
  Surely I've missed the point, somewhere.</p>
  
  <p>So enlighten me, please. What, pray tell, are the PostgreSQL-ish SQL 
  queries one uses so as to explore a given DB's table structure? What is 
  the PostgreSQL translation for "SHOW TABLES" and "DESCRIBE table"?</p>