BEGIN{ a["third"]="Jones" a["second"]="X" a["first"]="Smith" asorti(a,b) print "What array a contains:" for (i in a) printf "a[%s] = %s\n",i,a[i] print "" print "What array b contains:" for (i in b) printf "b[%s] = %s\n",i,b[i] print "" print "Accessing original array a with sorted indices in b" for (i in b) printf "%6s: %s\n",b[i],a[b[i]] }