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APIs don't matter, do they?

I’d like to introduce you to a bit of API which belongs to libdbi which belongs in the “Mommy, who cut my crack with washing powder?” box…

int dbi_driver_quote_string(dbi_driver Driver, char **orig)

  Encloses the target string in the types of quotes that the database expects,
  and escapes any special characters. The original string will be freed and will
  point to a newly allocated one (which you still must free on your own).

Arguments
  Driver: The target driver.
  orig: A pointer to the string to quote and escape.

Returns
  The new string’s length.

Now what on earth posesses someone to think that such an API is better than, for example: char *dbi_driver_quote_string(dbi_Driver Driver, const char *orig) returning, ooh NULL if it had a problem?

Now I have to get a string out of Lua, strdup() it, only to have it free()d when the quote function gets a hold of it. But hey, malloc churn is fast, right?

— Bletch