hi ben
actually you can use [repack] as you described it. if you send it a bang, it outputs its content as a list. see attached patvh.
i used a [repack 1000] in the example, but this value depends on what you expect the resulting list-length maximum is. this is a bit a bad hack. i don't know if big values in [repack] only need more memory or also more cpu-time. i would check that if you stream a lot of data through it.
roman