I am just wondering if there is another way to avoid the looping.

We often get this kind of question, and it make no sense. They want to execute the same code repeatedly (in this case, checking if an element is greater than $x), and they want to do it without looping. The problem is that executing the same code repeatedly is the very definition of looping. What does looping mean to those people?

True, some say they want to avoid a specific kind of loop, but they never say what about that kind of loop they are trying to avoid. I find it hard to believe it's because they don't like the spelling of the keyword.