Factory vs instance constructors

Question

I can\'t think of any reasons why one is better than the other. Compare these two implementations:

public class MyClass
{
    public MyClass(string fileName         


        

Answer 1

Methods that do the construction for you are super useful for:

public class Class
    {
        public static List FromFiles(IEnumerable paths)
        {
            List instances = new List();
            foreach (string path in paths)
            {
                instances.Add(new Class() { Path = path });
            }
            return instances;
        }

        public string Path { get; set; }
    }

...since "normal" constructors cannot do this.