However, why is the auto-decrement operator not magical in nature?

Suppose it was, what would the following print:

    my $a = "a";
    $a --;
    print $a, "\n";
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Abigail

It would output "\`\n" if it acted upon the ordinal value.

It would output "\`\n" if it acted upon the ordinal value.

But since ++ doesn't act on ordinal values, why should --? Furthermore, what should:

    my $a = "a";
    $a --;
    print $a;
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print on an EBCDIC platform?

Abigail