Convert text to date

[danbjoseph]

The date() function "Converts an integer representing a number of days from January 1, 1970 (the Unix Epoch) to a standard date value." See the docs on Converting dates and time.

Why do you need to convert to a date? See this thread for some info that may be useful:

Convert string to date?

In general, comparing dates directly is a little unreliable. I would use decimal-date-time() to convert the string and date first to number of days past Unix Epoch and see if the difference is roughly greater than 180 days.