>To get the result as a character string (I missed that part of it) you could modify it to

>>
>? DTOC(CTOD(TRANSFORM(ab,"@R ^9999-99-99")))

>
>To work it into your line of code how about something like..........

>? DTOC(CTOD(EVALUATE("ALLTRIM(TRANSFORM(CHRTRAN(FormatValue,CharactersToStrip,''), '@R ^####/##/##'))")))

Isn't it amazing how much has to be done sometimes to get a simple value converted?