mkdate error?

The following bit of code completely baffles me as to why it doesn't work. I am doing a very simple validation where I check to see if the "end date" field of an inputted record is an older date than the "start date". I checked this by putting in the same date for both end and start dates. Yet mkdate gives me a different value for each even though since they are both the same date, I should get the same value returned. Right? //notice the start and end date is the same. Therefore, you should get the same value for each, right? <START LITTLE CODE SNIPPET> $parsed_start_date=split("/", "08/02/2002"); $parsed_end_date=split("/", "08/02/2002"); $start_dts = mktime("", "", "", $parsed_start_date[0], $parsed_start_date[1], $parsed_start_date[2]); $end_dts = mktime("", "", "", $parsed_end_date[0], $parsed_end_date[1], $parsed_date[2]); if ($start_dts > $end_dts) { echo "This function thinks the end date is older than the start date."; } else { echo "Whoah, it actually worked."; } <END LITTLE CODE SNIPPET> What am I not seeing? Thanks in advance, J. Chyun