Metaclass vs Class factory

[lbolognini at gmail.com]

Hi all,

I dare risk my brain exploding by reaching for the understanding of
metaclasses.

At first i thought i almost got them, even if vaguely back in a corner
of my mind, my understanding was that, as classes' class a metaclass
would be able to return a different class based on input...

... until i thought of factory functions and, Python considering
classes just another first-class object, as such i started considering
them.

So is anybody experienced in the dark side semantics of Python willing
to explain the difference, in simple terms, between a metaclass and a
function that returns a class?

Thanks,
Lorenzo