diff --git a/buildnum b/buildnum
deleted file mode 100644
index 295c01a..0000000
--- a/buildnum
+++ /dev/null
@@ -1,4 +0,0 @@
-(S'1.0.0-build'
-p1
-I10
-t.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/cecil/core/__init__.py b/cecil/core/__init__.py
index 0f31680..39c9586 100644
--- a/cecil/core/__init__.py
+++ b/cecil/core/__init__.py
@@ -6,3 +6,34 @@ Core modules from Cecil's library
 __all__ = ["objproxy", "config"]
 
 import objproxy, config
+
+def ascii(s):
+	if isinstance(s, unicode):
+		return s.encode(b'ascii')
+	else:
+		return str(s)
+
+def utf8(s):
+	if isinstance(s, unicode):
+		return s.encode(b'utf-8')
+	else:
+		return str(s)
+
+def from_ascii(s):
+	if isinstance(s, unicode):
+		return s
+	else:
+		return s.decode(b'ascii')
+
+def from_latin1(s):
+	if isinstance(s, unicode):
+		return s
+	else:
+		return s.decode(b'latin-1')
+
+def from_utf8(s):
+	if isinstance(s, unicode):
+		return s
+	else:
+		return s.decode(b'utf-8')
+
diff --git a/cecil/core/inifile.py b/cecil/core/inifile.py
index f435052..777d199 100644
--- a/cecil/core/inifile.py
+++ b/cecil/core/inifile.py
@@ -204,7 +204,7 @@ class inifile(dict):
 		
 
 	def __getitem__(self, key):
-		if type(key) != str:
+		if not isinstance(key, basestring):
 			raise TypeError, "Ini files can only contain string keys"
 			
 		if self.cur_section != None: