tuple properties out of TupleTableSlot

I'm a beginning developer to postgresql working on a CS Master's project trying to implement a new join operator.  My
questionis how to effectively break down a TupleTableSlot into it's properties.  I've been messing around with it for
hoursnow and thought the code below would return the attribute name for table but instead just returns some binary
info.

For example, If I have table

TABLE1 with columns (ID, SCORE), I was thinking that the below code would return ID and SCORE as they are the column
names. I also need to be able to retrieve the data stored in these columns (select id, score from table1;).  Any tips
onwhere to look or find the information I'm looking for would be much appreciated. 
TupleTableSlot *slot;
TupleDesc       tuple_type;

tuple_type = slot->ttc_tupleDescriptor;
for (i = 0; i < tuple_type->natts; i++)       {           printf("The attname name is
%c",tuple_type->attrs[i]->attname.data);
       }


Thank You.