What exactly is a Class Factory?

Question

I see the word thrown around often, and I may have used it myself in code and libraries over time, but I never really got it. In most write-ups I came across, they just went

Answer 1

The Wikipedia article gives a pretty good definition: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Factory_pattern

But probably the most authoritative definition would be found in the Design Patterns book by Gamma et al. (commonly called the Gang of Four Book).