Renumbering partitions on an external drive

[Robert Moskowitz]

I have been messing around with partitions on a drive and now physically 
they are sdb2,sdb3,sdb1.  I want to get them in order. the fdisk xpert 
fiw does NOT renumber them; it seems to be happy with things as they are.

Is there anyway to fix this short of rebuilding the partition table, 
carefully pointing each new entry to the right block?  parted and 
gparted don't have any help either.

Yes, I know this is cosmetic, but hey, it SHOULD LOOK nice and neat...