function get_tables()
{
// fetch all the tables in the database
$result = $this->fetch_assoc_all('', $this->query('
SHOW TABLES
'));
$tables = array();
// as the results returned by default are quite odd
// translate them to a more usable array
foreach ($result as $tableName) {
$tables[] = array_pop($tableName);
}
// return the array with the table names
return $tables;
}