Well, It is not that easy. For example, take the function strlen(). You can see that it is a wrapper for the C function.

So can you expect that it will behave like the c function, accepting strings only? No! It now accept both strings and integers. So you have part perl there.

Now take another function. ctype_digit(). I don't know where the name come from. You expect it to behave like strlen() accepting both strings and numbers. But no!

If you pass it a number, it won't even bat an eye (throw an exception or error), but it will just return gibberish...

Hope my point, that these influences are mixed together in a haphazard fashion, is a bit more clear now...