st: getting Stata to understand the format of the dates

[Tzaloupas Dimitrov <tzaloupas1232@yahoo.gr>]

Dear all,
 
I have a column with this date format 
 
 
 dates
01/07/2009
01/08/2009
01/09/2009
01/10/2009
01/11/2009
01/12/2009
01/01/2010
01/02/2010
01/03/2010
01/04/2010
01/05/2010
01/06/2010
01/07/2010

 
HOw can i get stata understand that this is a time series data set of monthly observations?
 
I tried something like
 
gen edate1 = monthly(dates, "DMY")
 
but it seems that it does not work
 
Any suggestions?
 
I use 64 bit Stata 11
 
thanks

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