In the Hmisc::describe documentation (at page 76) there is written:
This function determines whether the variable is character, factor, category, binary, discrete numeric, and continuous numeric, and prints a concise statistical summary according to each
What is the difference between a "factor" and a "category"?
On page 12 of the same document, it is stated that:
Categorical predictors are required to be coded as integers (as factor does internally).
So the difference is mainly their appearance if I get it right.