Date:         Thu, 10 Jul 2008 12:55:29 GMT
Reply-To:     nikhil <u44757@UWE.UGA.EDU>
Sender:       "SAS(r) Discussion" <SAS-L@LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
From:         nikhil <u44757@UWE.UGA.EDU>
Subject:      detecting variants of a company's name
Comments: To: sas-l@uga.edu
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"

I have a dataset containing the names of some companies.
eg ,

Name                                                 x

IBM                                                     1

IBM corp                                              1
international business machines             1
Microsoft                                              2
Mocrosft corp                                        2
Micro soft                                             2
yahoo                                                   3
yahoo!                                                  3
YAHOO                                                3


I have to use SAS and prepare a list of unique company names. The solution
has to have a way to detect variations in the names, including spelling
mistakes. I need to finally have a list of unique names.

The output expected is something like,

Name              x

IBM                 3
Microsoft          6
Yahoo              9

Please, tell me how could I do it using SAS.

Waiting for a kind answer.

Thanks and regards