The ”Extract Refactoring” Refactoring

There is a gap between refactoring tools and general-purpose program transformation tools that has yet to be filled. Refactoring tools are easy to use and well-established, but provide only a limited number of options. On the other hand, program transformation tools are pow-erful but are viable only for large transformation tasks. We propose an approach in which a developer specifies trans-formations to a program by example, using an IDE plu-gin recording the programmer’s actions as changes. These transformation, without the need of a dedicated syntax. Defining refactorings and transformations from concrete cases would enable more frequent uses of medium scale transformations.