date field

Hi,

i want to make a little birthday database. Whats the advantage of using the date field instead of a normal VARCHAR field??

From my understanding here are a few of the benefits of using a DATE column instead of a VARCHAR:

1) a DATE column will take less disk space to store than a VARCHAR
2) a DATE column will only accept valid dates--this provides built-in error-checking
3) you can take advantage of MySQL's Date and Time functions easier

However to tell you the truth I usually just use a varchar myself.