I'm trying to learn PostgreSQL to get a jerb. I've used MySQL a little bit before but I'm by no means a database expert.

I installed it on my machine to the default location /var/lib/postgres and followed the instructions on the Arch Wiki to create a database. Then I took a peak inside the directory:

[:/var/lib/postgres]$ ls -lh
total 0
drwx------ 1 postgres postgres 512 Feb 25 23:40 data
[:/var/lib/postgres]$ cd data
[:/var/lib/postgres/data]$ ls -lh
total 56K
drwx------ 1 postgres postgres   32 Feb 23 19:08 base
drwx------ 1 postgres postgres  606 Feb 25 23:41 global
drwx------ 1 postgres postgres    0 Feb 23 18:44 pg_commit_ts
drwx------ 1 postgres postgres    0 Feb 23 18:44 pg_dynshmem
-rw------- 1 postgres postgres 4.7K Feb 23 18:44 pg_hba.conf
-rw------- 1 postgres postgres 1.6K Feb 23 18:44 pg_ident.conf
drwx------ 1 postgres postgres   76 Feb 25 23:45 pg_logical
drwx------ 1 postgres postgres   28 Feb 23 18:44 pg_multixact
drwx------ 1 postgres postgres    0 Feb 23 18:44 pg_notify
drwx------ 1 postgres postgres    0 Feb 23 18:44 pg_replslot
drwx------ 1 postgres postgres    0 Feb 23 18:44 pg_serial
drwx------ 1 postgres postgres    0 Feb 23 18:44 pg_snapshots
drwx------ 1 postgres postgres    0 Feb 25 23:40 pg_stat
drwx------ 1 postgres postgres   92 Feb 26 20:39 pg_stat_tmp
drwx------ 1 postgres postgres    8 Feb 23 18:44 pg_subtrans
drwx------ 1 postgres postgres    0 Feb 23 18:44 pg_tblspc
drwx------ 1 postgres postgres    0 Feb 23 18:44 pg_twophase
-rw------- 1 postgres postgres    3 Feb 23 18:44 PG_VERSION
drwx------ 1 postgres postgres   76 Feb 23 18:44 pg_wal
drwx------ 1 postgres postgres    8 Feb 23 18:44 pg_xact
-rw------- 1 postgres postgres   88 Feb 23 18:44 postgresql.auto.conf
-rw------- 1 postgres postgres  28K Feb 23 18:44 postgresql.conf
-rw------- 1 postgres postgres   48 Feb 25 23:40 postmaster.opts
-rw------- 1 postgres postgres  101 Feb 25 23:40 postmaster.pid

Holy hell! What is all this junk? Where does my newly created database "live"? I don't see any sign of it anywhere. If I create tables in my database, where do those live? Etc.

It reminds me of what the inside of a .git directory looks like: a bunch of binary gobbledygunk. Is this stuff not supposed to be human readable?