About todate() function i have attached the screenshot for reference i am getting a different result but the documentation is telling a different format

I think it is avoid the confusion that first part is month and then it is date and then year because the return type is date for conversion in this format we can use the text() function and the Date in appian takes all the integer values for date month and year.

Could you please share the output which you are expecting. The output of this function is of MM/DD/YYYY format. But if you want to modify it then you can use text function over it.

Which documentation link are you browsing? 
The todate() function is working correctly. However, you need to change the format of the output where you need to customise the order of date/month/year and also change from number to text, then text() is the correct function you will need to use.