Convert faulty string to date

[Kjerstin Deane]

I am a somewhat new user of mysql query browser. I'm working with a legacy database in MySql 4.1. I'm looking for some assistance in writing a select statement that would convert the text of a field to a date format. The problem is that the text of the field is not in a format that MySql seems to recognize.

The date is being stored as '11/19/8' and I would like to display it in my query resulst as '2008-11-19' so that I can use date functions on it. The field name is lastdate. I have tried breaking each component into a substring and the concatenating them. The problem that I am running into is that some months and days are 1 digit and some are 2 digits i.e. '1/1/8' vs. '11/1/8' vs. '11/11/8'. Another issue is that before Y2K the dates were '1/1/99'. Obviously the only thing common to every one of these cases is the '/'

I'm hoping someone out there has done something just like this and can offer me a quick answer.
Thanks!
-Kjerstin