I read MartinFowler's article (see ReFactor) where he gives an example of how refactoring works in practice.  That made me wonder whether there are patterns here.  I've attempted to write a couple of them down, almost all of them shamelessly stolen from Martin's article.  Feel free to comment and edit for clarity or brevity. --MarnixKlooster

First there some patterns about refactoring in general:

	* BacktrackIfRefactoringFails
	* TheFirstRefactoringStep
	* RefactoringInVerySmallSteps 
	* TestEveryRefactoring
	* RefactoringInDuets 
	* RefactoringUsingTools
	* RefactoringHat

''(Some of these patterns were created by SantiagoValdarrama who used the reduced pattern version to create a complete version using a pattern template. Also, he created some of them from the ground up.)''
 
And there are also specific techniques that one can use:
	* MethodObject -- a pattern
	* ExtractMethod
	* MoveMethod
	* ReplaceConditionalWithPolymorphism
	* InlineMethod

Here http://www.refactoring.com/catalog/index.html is a list that is a ''bit'' longer...
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You really ''must'' read MartinFowler's RefactoringImprovingTheDesignOfExistingCode.
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See AboutRefactoringPatterns, RefactoringToPatterns.
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CategoryRefactoring