[SOLVED] How to sort the characters of a word using awk?

How to sort the characters of a word using awk?

I can't seem to find any way of sorting a word based on its characters in awk. For example if the word is "hello" then its sorted equivalent is "ehllo". how to achieve this in awk ?

Solution

With GNU awk for PROCINFO[], "sorted_in" (see https://www.gnu.org/software/gawk/manual/gawk.html#Controlling-Scanning) and splitting with a null separator resulting in an array of chars:

$ echo 'hello' |
awk '
    BEGIN { PROCINFO["sorted_in"]="@val_str_asc" }
    {
        split($1,chars,"")
        word = ""
        for (i in chars) {
            word = word chars[i]
        }
        print word
    }
'
ehllo

$ echo 'hello' | awk -v ordr='@val_str_asc' 'BEGIN{PROCINFO["sorted_in"]=ordr} {split($1,chars,""); word=""; for (i in chars) word=word chars[i]; print word}'
ehllo

$ echo 'hello' | awk -v ordr='@val_str_desc' 'BEGIN{PROCINFO["sorted_in"]=ordr} {split($1,chars,""); word=""; for (i in chars) word=word chars[i]; print word}'
ollhe