In this list of loop-special-languages, XQuery also deserves an honorable mention. With the sequence being the root datatype, it makes loops rather implicit. Y

In this list of loop-special-languages, XQuery also deserves an honorable mention. With the sequence being the root datatype, it makes loops rather implicit. You can write declare function local:formatName($person) { xs:concat($person/@firstName, " ", $person/@lastName) }; and it will format the name of zero, one or many persons. Working with XQuery makes you think differently about iteration and shows how much plumbing we normally use for it.