Create table within a table in a wiki page - mediawiki

Question

I want to create the following table within a table in a wiki page:
A : B (Line 1)
C : D
E : F1 G1 (Line 3)
F2 G2
F3 G3
H : I
One option is to create the main table with four columns. That would mean creating empty string for col 3, 4 for lines 1 (and similar ones). Is there
{|
|A
|:
|B
|
|
|-
(etc)
|}
I was wondering if there is a way to state that I want to create an embedded table for Row 3 / Col 3 element of the main table?
I tried the following:
{|
{|
|A
|:
|B
|-
|C
|:
|D
|-
|E
|:
{|
|F1
|G1
|-
|F2
|G2
|-
|F3
|G3
|}
|-
|H
|:
|I
|}
However the above did not work, "B", and "D" got indented to the right of the "F/G" table.
Any ideas?
Kind of related question, how do I escape characters single characters like "{" and "|" so they get displayed.

Answer 1

Embedding one table inside another should not be a problem. In your code there is a table cell missing after the nested table, that could maybe mess things upp in some browsers. The follwing works well in every browser I try:
{| border="1"
|A
|:
|B
|-
|C
|:
|D
|-
|E
|:
{|
|F1
|G1
|-
|F2
|G2
|-
|F3
|G3
|}
|
|-
|H
|:
|I
|}
to use special characters such as pipe in MediaWiki wiki code, the easiest way (and less confusing for other editors) is to include it in <nowiki> code:
<nowiki> { | } </nowiki>
On a related note: Problems do arise when you start using parser functions inside tables, as the pipe character then have a special meaning. The most common solution to this problem (frequently used on Wikipedia,for instance), is to create a template (usually called Template:!, as ! visually resembles |), containing only the single character |. You can then use {{!}} as a substitute for | inside not only tables, but also template variables.