date expression
Any expression that can be interpreted as a date, including date literals, numbers that look like dates, strings that look like dates, and dates returned from functions. A date expression is limited to numbers or strings, in any combination, that can represent a date from January 1, 100 – December 31, 9999.
Dates are stored as part of a real number. Values to the left of the decimal represent the date; values to the right of the decimal represent the time. Negative numbers represent dates prior to December 30, 1899.