ansible <host-pattern> expansion is not working -> ansible servers[:24] -vv -i inventory_file -m shell -a "echo yes"

Hi,

ansible expansion is not working. Is this because it has to do double expansion in inventory? Could it possibly be a bug? I am doing something wrong?

ansible --version
ansible 1.9.2
configured module search path = None

invetory_file:
[servers]
db-[0001:0048].ansbile.com

The following does not work:
$ ansible servers[:24] -vv -i inventory_file -m shell -a “echo yes”
No hosts matched

Thanks