"date" function in IE xml parser?

[violist]

This question regards the MS default msxml parser in IE. I have seen this function used in code (date()), but I can't find any documentation on it. I suppose it converts a string to a date datatype. Here's an example:
<xsl:for-each select=&quot;node()&quot; order-by=&quot;date(.)&quot;>
Does this really work? Can anyone provide a link to MS documentation? thanks!