Is there a library function in Python to turn a generator-function into a function returning a list?

To the best of my knowledge (and I’ve looked, because I’ve wondered exactly the same thing), no: there is no direct way of doing this with the standard library.

There is a thoroughly tested listify wrapper in unstdlib.py library, though: https://github.com/shazow/unstdlib.py/blob/master/unstdlib/standard/list_.py#L149

def listify(fn=None, wrapper=list):
    """
    A decorator which wraps a function's return value in ``list(...)``.

    Useful when an algorithm can be expressed more cleanly as a generator but
    the function should return an list.

    Example::

        >>> @listify
        ... def get_lengths(iterable):
        ...     for i in iterable:
        ...         yield len(i)
        >>> get_lengths(["spam", "eggs"])
        [4, 4]
        >>>
        >>> @listify(wrapper=tuple)
        ... def get_lengths_tuple(iterable):
        ...     for i in iterable:
        ...         yield len(i)
        >>> get_lengths_tuple(["foo", "bar"])
        (3, 3)
    """
    def listify_return(fn):
        @wraps(fn)
        def listify_helper(*args, **kw):
            return wrapper(fn(*args, **kw))
        return listify_helper
    if fn is None:
        return listify_return
    return listify_return(fn)