[M3devel] efficient "safe" Modula-3?

[Jay]

How can I write this in idiomatic Modula-3:
    date : Date.T    Fmt.FN(                                 (* heap alloc *)        "%04s-%02s-%02s %02s:%02s:%02s",        ARRAY OF TEXT{                      (* heap alloc? easily avoided, but just over the limit *)            Fmt.Int(date.year),             (* heap alloc *)            Fmt.Int(ORD(date.month) + 1),   (* heap alloc *)            Fmt.Int(date.day),              (* heap alloc *)            Fmt.Int(date.hour),             (* heap alloc *)            Fmt.Int(date.minute),           (* heap alloc *)            Fmt.Int(date.second)            (* heap alloc *)            })));
to be more like in performance to:
    Date_t date; /* Win32 SYSTEMTIME essentially */    char Buffer[sizeof("2008-01-01 20:29:58")];    sprintf(        Buffer,        "%04u-%02u-%02u %02u:%02u:%02u",        date.year,        ORD(date.month) + 1,        date.day,        date.hour,        date.minute,        date.second);
or, ok:
    Date_t date; /* Win32 SYSTEMTIME essentially */    char* Buffer = (char*) malloc(sizeof("2008-01-01 20:29:58")); /* deliberate heap alloc for long lived string */    if (Buffer== NULL)
...    sprintf(        Buffer,        "%04u-%02u-%02u %02u:%02u:%02u",        date.year,        ORD(date.month) + 1,        date.day,        date.hour,        date.minute,        date.second);
Unnecessary heap allocations bug me.
I seem to see a fair amount of tedious Modula-3 code around to avoid heap allocs,folks manually managing growing arrays instead of using something generic and efficient.
Can "safe" code be efficient and convenient to write?
(and yes, I know about snprintf, sprintf_s, etc.)
 - Jay
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