Can refactoring be considered a form of encoding?

So I am doing a report on Encoding and reading up it keeps making me think of re-factoring when I read stuff like it can reconstruct code, or change size and such. Encoding itself is normally going from 1 form of code like text to a coded from like binary, but when I read up about "re-encoding" it seems ike it would be refactoring itself... Thoughts?

I don't see how the two concepts are related.
To view refactoring as re-encoding the functional aspects / behavior of a body of source code in a different structure is kind of a stretch, in my opinion.
What would the equivalent of decoding be in that scenario? Restoring the previous revision from a version control system?

Sort of like asking if chile plants are like stratocumulus clouds.

I'm not sure that Jay's understanding of refactoring is the same as you two's understanding. To me, and probably to you as well, refactoring is where I look at my code and decide that parts of it need to be rewritten or redesigned or restructured to improve some aspect of the code. Whereas Jay seems to have read something which implies

it can reconstruct code

which sounds like it refers to some automated process, rather than something a programmer does. So I think that we're talking at cross-purposes here.

Perhaps -- it'd certainly explain the disconnect. So Jay, what is it that you mean by "refactoring"?