What does the 'asort' function do in AWK?

The asort function in AWK is used to sort an array in ascending order. It takes an array as an argument and sorts its elements, storing the sorted values back into the same array. The indices of the array are preserved, but they may not be in the original order after sorting.

Here's a basic example of how to use asort:

BEGIN {
    # Define an array
    arr["b"] = 2
    arr["a"] = 1
    arr["c"] = 3

    # Sort the array
    n = asort(arr)

    # Print the sorted array
    for (i in arr) {
        print i, arr[i]
    }
}

In this example, the array arr is sorted, and the output will show the keys in ascending order along with their corresponding values.