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

Yes, there is a putformatted() function. In fact, there are two: putc() and putn(). Putc handles character formats, putn() numeric. Your code will need to look at the format name (all and only character formats start with "$") do determine which to use. Here is the syntax of putc (from the interactive help):

PUTC(source, format.<,w>)

Arguments

source 
is the SAS expression to which you want to apply the format.

format. 
is an expression that contains the character format you want to apply to source.

w 
specifies a width to apply to the format. 

Interaction: If you specify a width here, it overrides any width specification
in the format.