Clarification on Claim Path

[babisRoutis]

I find paragraph 8.1 about Claim Path and especially the part that explains the processing of the path components confusing.
What is not clear to me is the difference between a string path component pointing to a JSON array claim and the same pointer with a null at the end.

Using the example of paragraph

{
  "name": "Arthur Dent",
  "address": {
    "street_address": "42 Market Street",
    "city": "Milliways",
    "postal_code": "12345"
  },
  "degrees": [
    {
      "type": "Bachelor of Science",
      "university": "University of Betelgeuse"
    },
    {
      "type": "Master of Science",
      "university": "University of Betelgeuse"
    }
  ],
  "nationalities": ["British", "Betelgeusian"]
}

I would like to ask if the two paths bellow will produce the same results:

• ["degrees", null]
• ["degrees"]

To my understanding,

• The first (["degrees", null]) will return a set of two objects (each one representing a degree)
• The 2nd (["degrees"]) will return a set containing a Json Array (with the two degrees)

Is this the expected outcome or both paths should return just a set of two degrees?

Furthermore, I have the impression that a path should always begin with a string simply because it has to be applied in the top-level json object