This is somewhat related to issue #200712, but requests a different (and somewhat complementary) refactoring pattern.

Assume you have the following code:

   foo.getBar().doSomething();

This can produce a NullPointerException if either the 'foo' instance or the 'getBar()' method's return value is null.  I think NetBeans would benefit from having a refactoring pattern which will change this into a multi-line statement which checks for null, like:

   if (foo == null) {
       throw new NullPointerException("foo is null");
   }

   Bar bar = foo.getBar();
   if (bar == null) {
       throw new NullPointerException("bar is null");
   }

   bar.doSomething();

This will be quite helpful for working with legacy code, especially when it has undocumented or inconsistent standards for null return values.