XSLT is purely declarative, not just kind of. Those ifs and switches are not imperative constructs, they're evaluated functionally. xsl:if conditionally appli

XSLT is purely declarative, not just kind of. Those ifs and switches are not imperative constructs, they're evaluated functionally. xsl:if conditionally applies a template, which kind of looks imperative and control-flowy, but is really functional all the way through. <xsl:if test="x">template</xsl:test> is basically this in Lisp: (if eval(x) (apply-template template) nil) And <xsl:for-each> is equivalent to map in Lisp. It's a functional projection, not an imperative loop, even if the syntax looks like that of an imperative language.