Data Manipulation Language

Many of the top-level pan language statements take a Data Manipulation Language (DML) block. Although the DML is not intended as a complete high-level programming language, it does provide many features of such a language and makes the pan language more flexible than a pure declarative language.

Overall the DML looks very similar to stripped-down c or java. The syntax and operators will be familiar to programmers of either language. The principal difference is that all DML statements return a value, like Lisp. The value of a block of statements is the value of the last statement executed.