when using pg_pconnect connections to connect from php to postgres, does pg_close :
It has to do with the PHP.ini configuration, if the label pgsql.allow_persistent is set to true then pg_close will not close the connection because it is persistent, otherwise if you set it to false pg_close will close the connection.
The documentation states on pg-pconnect:
pg_close() will not close persistent links generated by pg_pconnect()