I have files that look like this:

```
|2000|,|23456745|,|23567897tyhgy6|,|SHARP, RODNEY H III|
|2000|,|12345678|,|34567tgh788877|,|WOOLARD, EDGAR S JR|

```

Basically, the columns are separated by commas and wrapped by pipes.

How do I read something like this using R?

I have tried

```
read.table("file.txt", sep="|")

```

but this doesn't work well, since every other column just contains a comma. I have tried using "|,|" as the separator, but apparently this is not allowed. Using "," doesn't work at all since the names then get split up.

Any easy way to do this?