That concept is not reified in the imperative language in any meaningful way. There is no actual function from the program state, to the next state as a language construct. Even if there were, it would be in a different category from the while loop and its ilk.
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The author may be eloquent, but unfortunately calls imperative operators, like while, "functions".
Imperative code is a function from one program state to another.
That concept is not reified in the imperative language in any meaningful way. There is no actual function from the program state, to the next state as a language construct. Even if there were, it would be in a different category from the while loop and its ilk.