Template:Encodefirst
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This template replaces the first character of the argument with its HTML entity if it is one of four wiki markup characters : ; * #. This can sometimes fix the issue at Help:Template#Problems and workarounds where a character may be processed as though it were at the beginning of a line.
Usage
{{Encodefirst|<string>}}
Examples
The output looks like the input whether a character is replaced or not.
{{Encodefirst|*Lisp}} produces: *Lisp
But the output will behave differently from the input in some situations where it is processed. For example, {{la}} fails as of August 2017 if its argument starts with *.
{{la|*Lisp}} causes the asterisk to be processed as list markup and produces broken display.
{{la|{{Encodefirst|*Lisp}}}} works correctly:
*Lisp (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)