You're right, the benefit isn't really about character differences. In both cases users need to be taught that '-' isn't a divider and '.' is a divider. The benefit is that it would be easier to teach people to start on the left then search right than it is to teach people to start at the leftmost / (but not the ones in the scheme) then search left.
It means that information to the left is always the important part. Right now you have to find the '/', evaluate the components leftwards, return to the '/' and evaluate components rightwards.
Given that finding the '/' is not always trivial (broken screen example in the article) and doing this requires you to think a lot of people won't do it.