Surprised by the command "del"

[From]

On Sat, 1 Mar 2008 21:05:41 +0100, "K Viltersten"
<tmp1 at viltersten.com> wrote:

>I'm reading the docs and at 5.2 the del
>statement is discussed. At first, i thought
>i've found a typo but as i tried that 
>myself, it turns it actually does work so.
>
>  a = ["alpha", "beta", "gamma"]
>  del a[2:2]
>  a
>
>Now, i expected the result to be that the
>"beta" element has been removed. Obviously, 
>Python thinks otherwise. Why?!
>
>Elaboration:
>I wonder why such an unintuitive effect has
>been implemented. I'm sure it's for a very
>good reason not clear to me due to my
>ignorance. Alternatively - my expectations
>are not so intuitive as i think.   :)


I think it should say 
del a[1:2]
then it works