Easiest way to populate a temp table with dates between and including 2 date parameters

Question

What is the easiest way to populate a temp table with dates including and between 2 date parameters. I only need the 1st day of the month dates.

So for example if @S

Answer 1

Interestingly, it is faster to create from enumerated data as per this article.

DECLARE @StartDate DATE = '10001201';
DECLARE @EndDate DATE   = '20000101';

DECLARE @dim TABLE ([date] DATE)

INSERT @dim([date])
SELECT d
FROM
(
  SELECT
      d = DATEADD(DAY, rn - 1, @StartDate)
  FROM 
  (
      SELECT TOP (DATEDIFF(DAY, @StartDate, @EndDate)) 
          rn = ROW_NUMBER() OVER (ORDER BY s1.[object_id])
      FROM
          sys.all_objects AS s1
      CROSS JOIN
          sys.all_objects AS s2
      ORDER BY
          s1.[object_id]
  ) AS x
) AS y;

On my machine, it's around 60% faster with large date ranges. The recursion method can populate 2000 years worth of data in around 3 seconds though, and looks a lot nicer, so I don't really recommend this method just for incrementing days.