[DB] Suggestion for field types

Hi all. Is there a mechanism in pear DB to ask about the generic field type? Eg. the following would be useful: ... $i = ... column number of result if ($result->isNumber($i)) ... code to right justify result if ($result->isChar($i)) ... code to quote/do case conversion etc. ... This would avoid having to worry about strange types like bpchar, SQLSMINT, int2. My feeling is the native types should in fact be entirely invisible via PEAR - that's what the native API's are for. But perhaps I'm missing something thats already there? Any comments welcome, Peter