Question

today1 = new Date(); today2 = Date.parse('2008-28-10'); 

To compare the time (millisecond) values of these I have to do the following, because today2 is just a number.

if (today1.getTime() == today2) 

Why is this?

Answer 1

To answer the question in the title: Because they decided so when creating the JavaScript language. Probably because Java’s java.util.Date parse function was doing the same thing, and they wanted to mimic its behavior to make the language feel more familiar.

To answer the question in the text… Use this construct to get two date objects:

var today2 = new Date(Date.parse('2008-10-28')); 

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EDIT: A simple

var today2 = new Date('2008-10-28'); 

also works.

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Note: Old Internet Explorer versions (anything before 9) does not understand dashes in the date string. It works with slashes, though:

var today2 = new Date('2008/10/28'); 

Slashes seem to be universally understood by browsers both old and new.