The usual form of this sandhi in modern Sanskrit is described as the a- dropping and being replaced by avagraha. If word boundaries are represented by SPACE, am I correct in believing that the change in codepoints is:
<U+0020 SPACE, U+0905 LETTER A> becomes <U+200B ZERO WIDTH SPACE, U+093D DEVANAGARI SIGN AVAGRAHA> I ask because I have seen lines starting with avagraha, though within a line there seems not to be a space before avagraha. (I am ignoring didactic writing which shows sandhi effects but leaves a space between the original words.) Richard.