Informix Error -1209

-1209 Without any delimiters, this date must contain exactly 6 or 8 digits.

When a literal date value is entered in numeric form, not enclosed in quotes to make it a character string, it must be entered as a number of precisely 6 digits (representing mmddyy) or 8 digits (representing mmddyyyy). Because no punctuation is present, a date with any other number of digits is ambiguous; it cannot be divided into month, day, and year with certainty.