Easy way to view postgresql dump files?

I have a ton of postgresql dump files I need to peruse through for data. Do I have to install Postgresql and "recover" each one of them into new databases one by one? Or I'm hoping there's a postgresql client that can simply open them up and I can peek at the data, maybe even run a simple SQL query?

The dump files are all from a Postgresql v9.1.9 server.

Or maybe there's a tool that can easily make a database "connection" to the dump files?

UPDATE: These are not text files. They are binary. They come from Heroku's backup mechanism, this is what Heroku says about how they create their backups:

PG Backups uses the native pg_dump PostgreSQL tool to create its backup files, making it trivial to export to other PostgreSQL installations.

Solution 1:

This was what I was looking for:

pg_restore db.bin > db.sql

Thanks @andrewtweber

Solution 2:

Try opening the files with text editor - the default dump format is plain text.

If the dump is not plain text - try using pg_restore -l your_db_dump.file command. It will list all objects in the database dump (like tables, indexes ...).

Another possible way (may not work, haven't tried it) is to grep through the output of pg_restore your_db_dump.file command. If I understood correctly the manual - the output of pg_restore is just a sequence of SQL queries, that will rebuild the db.

Solution 3:

In newer versions you need to specify the -f flag with a filename or '-' for stdout

pg_restore dump_file.bin -f -