Here's an alternative using Anarki scanners (or if you prefer, you can always use coerce which is cheaper on the memory; however scanners are lazier and, if you need to process less than maybe 1/4 the original string, is cheaper in memory too)
(def shortify (i s)
(let shorten nil
(= shorten
(fn (i ss)
(if (is i 0)
nil
(when ss
(pr:car ss)
(if (and (caris ss #\newline) (is (cadr ss) #\newline))
(let ss (cdr ss)
(while (caris ss #\newline)
(prn)
(zap cdr ss))
(shorten (- i 1) ss))
(shorten i (cdr ss)))))))
; replace with (coerce s 'cons) to taste
(tostring:shorten i (scanner-string s))))
Untested of course, and you better make sure the parens match, I don't have access to vi right now ~.~ ^^.
Edit: s/l/ss/, because l (small letter L) looks like 1 (number one)
Edit2: err. Actually I thought i would be number of paras. Oh well. At least now you have more generic code ^^:
