[development] getting the full $form in 5.x

Maybe I'm missing something obvious, but is there a simple way in Drupal 5.x to get the full form corresponding to a particular form ID? Specifically, I want to have the $form with all the elements added via hook_form_alter, but without rendering the $form. Looks like I might have to do it in 2 steps: $form = drupal_retrieve_form('myformid') foreach (module_implements('form_alter') as $module) { $function = $module .'_form_alter'; $function('myformid', $form); } Thanks, Peter