How can I make a character variable equal to the formatted value of a numeric variable for arbitrary SAS formats?

Question

If I have a numeric variable with a format, is there a way to get the formatted value as a character variable?

e.g. I would like to write something like the following to

Answer 1

This seemed to work for a couple that I tried. I used VARFMT and a macro function to retrieve the format of the given variable.

 data test;
  format i ddmmyy10. b comma12.;
  i = "10JUN2009"d;
  b = 123405321;
run;


%macro  varlabel(variable) ;
  %let dsid=%sysfunc(open(&SYSLAST.)) ;
  %let varnum=%sysfunc(varnum(&dsid,&variable)) ;
  %let fmt=%sysfunc(varfmt(&dsid,&varnum));
  %let dsid=%sysfunc(close(&dsid)) ;
  &fmt
%mend varlabel;

data test2;
  set test;
  i_formatted = put(i, %varlabel(i) );
  b_formatted = put(b, %varlabel(b) );
  put i_formatted=;
  put b_formatted=;
run;

This gave me:

i_formatted=10/06/2009
b_formatted=123,405,321