C Library API design (memory management)

Hi,

Can anyone guide me on the following question. What is the best practices concerning designing C library API which works with structures, in terms of memory management and initialization.

I.e. for structure "foo", which one (and why) is more preffered:

1.
struct foo* foo_create(...);
void foo_destroy(struct foo* p);

2.
void foo_init(struct foo* p);
void foo_cleanup(struct foo* p);

3. Combination of 2 & 3.

Thank you.

Unless you have a good reason for separating create from init, then "create is init" and "cleanup is destroy" is a much simpler interface.

For a start, you don't have to worry about garbage instances of foo that were allocated, but the programmer forgot to call init.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Salem

Unless you have a good reason for separating create from init, then "create is init" and "cleanup is destroy" is a much simpler interface.

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No, I have no such reasons. My only concern is usability and (may I call it as) "a common approach".
Is it alright to force clients create foo on heap? I don't know how they'll use it. I mean these use-cases:
1.
struct foo* my_foo = foo_create(...);
...
foo_destroy(my_foo)

2.
struct foo my_foo;
foo_init(&my_foo);
...
foo_cleanup(&my_foo);

I would say the second is better since then the user can choose to create the object on the stack or the heap.
It should have a return type of int or possibly bool to indicate success/failure.
Better names would be foo_create and foo_destroy.