Use of to_date function

Does anybody know if you can use the to_date function to select on both a date and time without typing in the format? For example, I want to do:

select datetime from a.view where datetime = to_date('05-AUG-97 11:13:42')

without having to type in the extra ,'DD-MON-YY HH:MI:SS'). I found out you don't have to type in the format portion when you just enter a date. For example, the following works:

select datetime from a.view where datetime = to_date('05-AUG-97')

but, of course, in this case you only get records occurring at time 00:00:00. Thanks for any help or if you can direct me where to go to get further information.

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