EncodingKawai - little sintax sugar for ruby force_encoding, also working on 1.8.7.

gem 'encoding-kawai'
str.utf8! # str.respond_to?(:force_encoding) ? str.force_encoding('utf-8') : str
str.binary! # str.respond_to?(:force_encoding) ? str.force_encoding('binary') : str

Extend object.

require 'encoding-kawai/object'

[str1, str2].utf8!
{str1 => str2}.utf8!
...