title: SAS - Reducing list of unique names to a smaller list of generic names based on string similarity within the list
body: <p>I have a list of 18,000 unique entities in SAS. In most cases, individual entities refer back to a broader general entity, but differ in spelling. For example, "BANK OF MADEUPBANK" and "BK OF MADEUPBANK" would exist in the list as unique entities even though they are in fact the same entity. My goal is to group the entities that are actually the same by a generic customer name. For example, the generic name "BANK OF MADEUPBANK" would apply to "BK OF MADEUPBANK", "BANK OF MADEUP", "BK OF MAD UP", etc. This is straightforward to achieve programatically with various string searches for some common, large entities. However, there's no way to apply a string search for obscure entities that I wouldn't even know are in the list without reading through all 18,000. I'm wondering if there is a way to conduct the logical process I used on this made up bank to catch all related instances within the list of 18,000...but without knowing what the ultimate general entity is. Is there a technique that can scroll through the list of names and group them based on similarity? </p>
  
  <p>Thanks!</p>