Unix. I love thee!
Extract an rpm without installing in to the current directory (really, the rpm command should support this):
$ rpm2cpio myrpmfile.rpm | cpio -idmv
*i: Restore archive
*d: Create leading directories where needed
*m: Retain previous file modification times when creating files
*v: Verbose i.e. display progress
List contents of an rpm:
$ rpm -qlp myrpmfile.rpm