# COBOL ALTER Statement
# Detects ALTER statement usage in COBOL
id: alter-statement
name: ALTER Should Not Be Used
severity: warning
category: maintainability
defect_class: correctness
inline_tier: warning
language: cobol

message: "ALTER should not be used - causes spaghetti code"

description: |
  ALTER changes paragraph/section execution flow at runtime.
  This is deprecated and causes unmaintainable spaghetti code.

  ✅ FIX: Restructure to use PERFORM or other control flow

query: |
  (alter_statement
    (ALTER) @ALTER)

metavars:
  - ALTER

tags:
  - maintainability
  - cobol
  - brain-overload
  - deprecated

examples:
  bad: |
    ALTER PARA-1 TO PROCEED TO PARA-2.  -- BAD

  good: |
    PERFORM PARA-2.  -- GOOD - explicit control flow

has_fix: false