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

source