Q's: pythonD and range(1,12)

[John Savage]

I've very new to python, and am currently toying with pythonD. Could
someone please explain the rationale behind python designers' thinking
in deciding the function "range(1,12)" should return the sequence 1 to
11 rather than the more intuitively-useful 1 to 12??

After downloading the substantial distribution .zip file, I'm intrigued
to find it includes 3 files of identical size and creation date, differing
apparently only in name (python, python2.4 and python24.exe) and each of
exactly 2,597,888 bytes. What possible purpose could be served by such
triplication that couldn't more efficiently be done by other means?

Naive but curious minds wish to know!
--
John Savage                   (my news address is not valid for email)