Using bash to sort data horizontally

Question

I have a file full of data in columns

sarah mark john
10    20   5
x     y    z 

I want to sort the data so the columns stay intact but the

Answer 1

Good one-liner gets the job done:

perl -ane '$,=" "; print sort @F; print "\n";' file

I found it here: http://www.unix.com/unix-for-advanced-and-expert-users/36039-horizontal-sorting-lines-file-sed-implementation.html