# File lib/ole/types/base.rb, line 49
      def self.dump str
        # need to append nulls?
        data = TO_UTF16.iconv str
        # not sure if this is the recommended way to do it, but I want to treat
        # the resulting utf16 data as regular bytes, not characters.
        data.force_encoding Encoding::ASCII_8BIT if data.respond_to? :encoding
        data
      end