ckoning

The two are not mutually exclusive.

WAY more than 98%. 98% or more don't even know what a regexp is, let alone how to construct one to match what they want to find, and then use the search-forward-regexp tools to actually find the matches.

While it doesn't detract from the point of your post, the behavior of private is correct and intended. If you wish to override an internal method of a class in PHP, like Java, you must declare it protected, not private. This is the difference between private (completely internal, not inherited) and protected (internal, but inherited by subclasses).