I've got a little bit of a PHP/mySQL issue that I'm sure some of you super-programmers can solve.

In a mySQL database, I've got a table with a field called 'thedate'. As you might guess, 'thedate' contains dates.

The only problem is, 'thedate' is a varchar field (not a date field). On top of that, 'thedate' is in the format MM-DD-YY.

I have a form that a user enters in the startmonth, startyear, endmonth, endyear, and the goal is to have a PHP script search 'thedate' for all records that fit inside this criteria.

My question is, is there a combination of SQL statements and built-in PHP functions that can perform this task, or will I need an algorithm to do this?