# Capture the first five words including whitespace.
 ($text) = $text =~ / (\S+ \s+
                       \S+ \s+
                       \S+ \s+
                       \S+ \s+
                       \S+ )/x;
 # Shrink any internal whitespace
 $text =~ s/\s+/ /g;

##</code><code>##

 # Capture the first five words including whitespace.
 if ( $text =~ / (\S+ \s+
                  \S+ \s+
                  \S+ \s+
                  \S+ \s+
                  \S+ )/x ) {
     # The regex extracted the first five words
     $text = "$1 ...";

     # Shrink any internal whitespace
     $text =~ s/\s+/ /g;
 }

##</code><code>##

 if ( $text =~ s/ (\S+ \s+
                   \S+ \s+
                   \S+ \s+
                   \S+ \s+
                   \S+ )/$1 .../x ) {
     # The match succeeded, shrink the white space
     $text =~ s/\s+/ /g;
 }