[R] seemingly simple read.table question

[markleeds at verizon.net]

I have a file that I thought would be fairly simple to read in using read.table but I am having problems ( as usual ).

each line of the file is of the form ( just 20 lines or so )

financials XXX, YYY, ZZZ
automobiles RTR, ABC, TGH

so the first field in the line is the industry and the other fields
( seperated by commas ) in the line are stock identifiers of stocks
in that industry. note that there is no comma between the industry
and the first stock identifier in the group which i guess might
complicate things ?

my goal is to make the row names the industries and the stock
identifiers the column data but i don't
have a header so , i am unclear ( reading the help on
read.table ) how to tell R that the first field in each line
should be used as the row name ? Thanks for any help
or for telling me tht this is not possible. This will be my last bother of the day to the help group.

I am using R-2.20 on windows xp and i've tried various settings
of read.table without success. thanks. 
  
                                                mark