Recovering data via raw table and field separators

From: "John Wells" <jb(at)sourceillustrated(dot)com>
To: pgsql-general(at)postgresql(dot)org
Subject: Recovering data via raw table and field separators
Date: 2007-12-04 17:34:51
Message-ID: 44dddf400712040934q2c81bf42n8ff29020149b14e@mail.gmail.com
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Guys,

We had a bit of a misfortunate communication breakdown here at work,
which led to a particular database not being backed up. Before we
recognized this problem, and entire database table was deleted.

I immediately copied the pgdata directory and have been able to find
the file that represents the data that was blown away. Fortunately, I
only really need to restore two pieces of data from the table...the id
field (primary key) and the employee_number field. Once I have this
data, I can re-populate and all my relationships will be honored.

I've been looking through the records with a hex editor, but the
unfortunate thing is that I either don't see consistency with field
separators or I'm overlooking them.

The table definition looks like this:

Table "public.users"
Column | Type |
Modifiers
---------------------------+-----------------------------+----------------------------------------------------
id | integer | not null
default nextval('users_id_seq'::regclass)
login | character varying(255) |
email | character varying(255) |
crypted_password | character varying(40) |
salt | character varying(40) |
created_at | timestamp without time zone |
updated_at | timestamp without time zone |
remember_token | character varying(255) |
remember_token_expires_at | timestamp without time zone |
manager_id | integer |
employee_number | integer |
classification_id | integer |
name | character varying(255) |
Indexes:
"users_pkey" PRIMARY KEY, btree (id)

Can anyone guide me in how I might parse this out? There has to be a
way...I think I just need a helpful push ;)

Thanks!
John

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