New built-in variable

[Jean-Michel ELYN]

Hello,

It seems previous mail has arrived empty. Going to try again...

I often use AWK (actually GAWK on Linux) because it is really powerful. 
However, I have a simple problem that is not solve in an elegant way, in 
my point of view.

*Problem:*
I want to sort numerical values on each line of a file.
file_in:
3 55 12 4
2 5 0

file_out:
3 4 12 55
0 2 5

*Current solution:*
gawk '{split($0, line); asort(line); for(i = 1; i <= NF; i++) {$i = 
line[i]}; print}' file_in > file_out

*Difficulty:*
As it is not possible to access current record ($0) as a standard array 
variable, I need to split input ($0) again into an array variable, asort 
it, then assign it back to input (field by field!) and finally print it.

*Possible solution:*
Create a built-in array variable named FIELDS (for example) that 
actually refers to $1, $2, .... The solution would become:
gawk '{asort(FIELDS); print}' file_in > file_out
This new built-in variable would much improve all work on small changes 
such as field order.