No ord() Hampers One-liners.

[Ralph Corderoy]

Hi,

I was needing an ord("A") -> 65 function.  I found

    http://www.gnu.org/manual/gawk/html_node/Ordinal-Functions.html

where justification is given for it not existing.  However, having to
build a lookup table isn't particular useful when one's trying to
concoct a shell one-liner.

    awk 'BEGIN {for (i = 0; i < 256; i++) t[sprintf("%c", i)] = i}
        {print t[substr($0, 1, 1)]}'

    awk '{print ord($0)}'

There's other things in awk that could be implemented in awk, e.g.
index() with substr(), but we're given the benefit of those.  So this is
just to ask for the issue to be reconsidered.  Although awk's being used
for bigger tasks these days, some of us still like the little
one-liners.  :-)

Cheers,
Ralph.