Common Questions about GTK
Common Questions : "1.4. How does memory management work in GTK+? Should I free data returned from functions? See the documentation for GObject and GtkObject. For GObject note specifically g_object_ref() and g_object_unref(). GtkObject is a subclass of GObject so the same points apply, except that it has a 'floating' state (explained in its documentation). For strings returned from functions, they will be declared 'const' (using G_CONST_RETURN) if they should not be freed. Non-const strings should be freed with g_free(). Arrays follow the same rule. (If you find an exception to the rules, please report a bug to http://bugzilla.gnome.org.)"