need help explaining htop fix

[joe42]

Hi,
Could you help me understand how the htop fix works? I don't quite get the code.
I can't install aha on a server, but need to parse htop output and the only part I am still missing is how to replace the "newlines" in the output. I would love to have an example akin to `echo "weird htop newline"|sed command to replace with \n``

if (opts.htop_fix) //a little dirty ...
{
    elem=parseInsert(buffer);
    pelem second=elem->next;
    if (second==NULL)
	    second=elem;
    newline=second->digit[0]-1;
    if (second->digitcount>1)
	    newline=(newline+1)*10+second->digit[1]-1;
    if (second->digitcount>2)
	    newline=(newline+1)*10+second->digit[2]-1;
    deleteParse(elem);
    if (newline<line)
	    opts.line_break=1;
}