default date format in 8i

I just noticed that our 8i installation here seems to do an implicit to_date conversion even of a 4-digit year even though the default date format is dd-mon-yy

I.e. I can do

select foo from sometable
where some_date > '1-dec-1999'

and get the same as with

select foo from sometable
where some_date > to_date('1-dec-1999','dd-mon-yyyy')

I am pretty sure the "where some_date > '1-dec-1999'" would have produced an error on 7.3
Is this a documented "feature" of 8i?

Btw. "where some_date > '1-dec-99'" works as expected too (i.e. expands the 99 to 2099)

Thanks

   Christian Received on Wed Jan 12 2000 - 16:50:33 CST