The Adapter Pattern in PHP5

>I really like your site, since it provides clean, simple examples of
>common patterns.
>A few notes:
>Pass the code through highlight_string for some basic syntax
>highlighting, makes code a lot easier to read.
>And:
>I realized the one thing it is lacking though: an English description
>of the code you're about to read. The opening blurbs are very terse
>and don't explain the process and logic behind the pattern so much as
>give a text book definition of what it is. The code itself is very
>explanatory, but a providing a context can help immensely.
>
>Ex: Singleton: In the singleton pattern a class can distribute one
>instance of itself to other classes.
>
>Might be better worded as: <what it means<what it is suppose to do>
><purpose in software designing<common method of implementation>
><special cases to note>
>
>In the singleton pattern a class can control the instantiation of
>itself to the user. This is akin to having a global instance of an
>object, and is used when only a single instance of a class should
>exist.
>
>The common way of implementing this is storing a static, private
>instance of the class within the class and using a static class
>getInstance() method to fetch the stored instance.
>
>This is useful for:
>Database connections
>Configuration classes
>Controlling what instance a user gets
>When class instances should be shared regardless of context
>
>Feel free to copy/paste that and modify it as you wish.