Inheritance is often explained in terms of cars and animals because those learning it are often familiar with such concepts. However my life as a programmer would be much more difficult if it weren't for the powers that inheritance provides. I have too many cases to list here, but some examples that immediately spring to mind:

• Users - Many systems have different types of users. Staff, clients, admins, auditors, and so on. Very often these all have a common set of methods and properties, and some are even sub-classes of each other (eg, admins are a special type of staff). This is one area that keeps coming up again and again.
• CPAN modules - CPAN is great, but what happens when you find a module that does almost what you want, but not quite? You want it to do just a little bit more, or something a little bit differently? This is an excellent opportunity for inheritance. Without having to change the exist code you can add new features and functionality to your favourite CPAN modules.
• The Finance::Quote::Yahoo::* modules all inherit from a common base. Yahoo provides excellent market information, but it varies from exchange to exchange. By inheriting from a common base, much time and effort is saved.
• Portlets - I've worked for a number of portal businesses over my career, and guess what? Each 'portlet' or property inherits from a common class.
• Much much more - CPAN provides a wealth of examples for using inheritance. Like any tool, the more you use it, the more familiar you become with its best applications.

---

---

Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!

Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.

Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.

Please read these before you post! —

• How do I compose an effective node title?
• How do I post a question effectively?
• Markup in the Monastery

Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:

a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr

You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)

	For:		Use:
	&		&
	<		&lt;
	>		&gt;
	[		&#91;
	]		&#93;

Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?

See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.