If I created an index with following command: CREATE INDEX ixname ON tbname (id);
Where ixname is the name of index, tbname is the table name for which the index is being created and id is the column the index is for.
Now, if I wanted to view what’s in ixname, how would I do it? (I’m asking with the assumption that an index is a relation/table with sorted column)
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Answer
You just can’t. Not as a client, not using SQL.
Data in the index is internal to PostgreSQL, and it’s not accessible to the outside world. You can introspect your index definitions (using pg_indexes table or pg_get_indexdef function), but you can’t look up what’s actually stored in those.
Well, you technically can find the file(s) in which the index data is stored (use pg_class.relfilenode and checking for files in base/ subdirectory), and decode the binary data of their b-trees (or whatever your indexes use), but I’m not sure this is what you want to do. Unless you intend to learn or hack PostgreSQL internals.