Instead of 10-24-95 or 24 Oct 1994, why not 19951024. Dates are then
numbers and can be searched with greater than (after), equal to (same
date), and less than (before) operators. You can't do that easily
with mixed/embedded alphanumeric names and you can't do it if the
numeric date is written in day-month-year order, ie. 24101995 is
greater than 01012000, but it comes before the new millenium.