AS3 STRING TO UTF-16

private function strToUTF16( str:String ):ByteArray
{
var utf16:ByteArray = new ByteArray();
var iChar:uint;
var i:uint=0, iLen:uint = str.length;

/* BOM first */
utf16.writeByte( 0xFF );
utf16.writeByte( 0xFE );

while ( i < iLen ) { iChar = str.charCodeAt(i); trace( iChar ); if ( iChar < 0xFF ) { /* one byte char */ utf16.writeByte( iChar ); utf16.writeByte( 0 ); } else { /* two byte char */ utf16.writeByte( iChar & 0x00FF ); utf16.writeByte( iChar >> 8 );
}

i++;
}

return utf16;
}