Getting field settings from CCK

Sometimes when you want to replicate cck field way of work you need to get the settings from the required field. The main function you need is _content_type_info(). It will return array with all of the content types info, so you can get the general field settings or field settings per content type. Just do: dsm(_content_type_info()) and examine output properly.

If you know what field in what node type you're looking for then you can just use:
content_fields('field_name', 'type');