Needs programming tip using date

[Raaijmakers, Vincent (IndSys, GE Interlogix)]

I think this is a bit of a newbie question in the dates area.

So before I end up in very ugly coding,
What is THE/recommended way in checking if a date formatted as "08/05/2003", so "month/day/year" 
is the date of today or a date of the current week?

Thanks,
Vincent