[buug] Sorting columns?

[Claude Rubinson]

Is there a utility out there for sorting columns of text?  I have a
dataset for which I want to reorder the columns of variables.  (It
would be nice to be able to specify the order of the columns but
alphabetically would be fine.)

One option would be to transpose the rows and columns, pipe the output
through sort, and transpose the data set back again.  Is anybody aware
of transpose utility (rot won't work because it operates on columns of
characters rather than delimiters and rs appears to be seriously
broken).

Thanks,

Claude