diff --git a/.gitignore b/.gitignore
index 4fa88e2b..bdd50c95 100644
--- a/.gitignore
+++ b/.gitignore
@@ -5,4 +5,3 @@ count.out
 test
 profile.out
 tmp.out
-.idea
diff --git a/tree.go b/tree.go
index 28c6b1e4..03adb1e5 100644
--- a/tree.go
+++ b/tree.go
@@ -611,7 +611,7 @@ walk: // Outer loop for walking the tree
 				if rb[0] != 0 {
 					// Old rune not finished
 					idxc := rb[0]
-					for i, c := range bytesconv.StringToBytes(n.indices) {
+					for i, c := range []byte(n.indices) {
 						if c == idxc {
 							// continue with child node
 							n = n.children[i]
@@ -643,7 +643,7 @@ walk: // Outer loop for walking the tree
 					rb = shiftNRuneBytes(rb, off)
 
 					idxc := rb[0]
-					for i, c := range bytesconv.StringToBytes(n.indices) {
+					for i, c := range []byte(n.indices) {
 						// Lowercase matches
 						if c == idxc {
 							// must use a recursive approach since both the
@@ -665,7 +665,7 @@ walk: // Outer loop for walking the tree
 						rb = shiftNRuneBytes(rb, off)
 
 						idxc := rb[0]
-						for i, c := range bytesconv.StringToBytes(n.indices) {
+						for i, c := range []byte(n.indices) {
 							// Uppercase matches
 							if c == idxc {
 								// Continue with child node