Originally Posted by Traxman

Always let mysql do the job for you, reading a line and splitting into a variable and then put that variable directly into mysql with str_to_date is better than you are doing it,
even if you can ofcus, why reinventing the wheel ?

if you feel unsure about the functions, simple queries against mysql as example:
mysql> SELECT STR_TO_DATE('1/12/2011', '%e/%m/%Y');
+--------------------------------------+
| STR_TO_DATE('1/12/2011', '%e/%m/%Y') |
+--------------------------------------+
| 2011-12-01 |
+--------------------------------------+
1 row in set (0.00 sec)

Then you always can see how things will look like and you will learn a lot more about
mysql functions.