The class::adapter class is intended as an abstract base class for creating any sort of class or object that follows the adapter pattern.

the term adapter refers to a "design pattern" of the same name, from the famous "gang of four" book "design patterns". although their original implementation was designed for java and similar single-inheritance strictly-typed langauge, the situation for which it applies is still valid.

an adapter in this perl sense of the term is when a class is created to achieve by composition (objects containing other object) something that can't be achieved by inheritance (sub-classing).

this is similar to the decorator pattern, but is intended to be applied on a class-by-class basis, as opposed to being able to be applied one object at a time, as is the case with the decorator pattern.