So I know Python strings are immutable, but I have a string:
c[\'date\'] = \"20110104\"
Which I would like to convert to
c[\'da
You are better off using string formatting than string concatenation
c['date'] = '{}-{}-{}'.format(c['date'][0:4], c['date'][4:6], c['date'][6:])
String concatenation is generally slower because as you said above strings are immutable.