It's entirely possible to write a wrapper function with a short name to convert string literals to actual string objects.

    my_function(my_var, 3.6, $("bzarflo"), my_other_var, false);

Isn't that much more of a mouthful, and as long as 'my_function' knows to free it, then you're A-OK! The only trouble is '$()' isn't legal in standard C, so a real solution would have to be something like 'str()'.