[R] importing text file with duplicate rows / indexing rows and columns

[grr@grell.mailshell.com]

Could somebody advise me about importing a txt file as a frame? I am using the command:

test <- read.delim ("~/docs/perl/expr_ctx.txt2", header=T, sep = "\t", row.names = 1)

This gives me an error because there are duplicate rows. 

In the txt file, the columns are unique subjects and the rows are variables, so I had planned to transform the file after importing. The first row and column are text labels, which I could either leave in (with duplicate rows) or ask R to remove for me, saving another file with index values. But I can't figure out how to do either of these things.

Thanks for any help,

Graham