string to ubyte[]

[berni via Digitalmars-d-learn]

I've got a function which takes two strings and should return 
them as a ubyte[] with additional zero bytes in between and 
around. This works:

   ubyte[] convert_string_pair(string first, string second)
   {
       auto b = new ubyte[](0);
       b ~= 0x00 ~ first ~ 0x00 ~ second ~ 0x00;
       return b;
   }

But I think it would be more elegant to do it in a single return 
statement, but unfortunately this does not work:

   ubyte[] convert_string_pair(string first, string second)
   {
       return 0x00 ~ first ~ 0x00 ~ second ~ 0x00;
   }

The reason is, that this expression creates a string and not a 
ubyte[]...