my $ham = "spam\tspam\tspam\tyam\tclam";
my $word    = qr{[^\t]+};
my $sep     = qr{\t};
my $capture = qr{($word)};
my (@jam ) = ($ham =~ m{\A                 # enforce beginning of string
                         $word $sep        # skip first word and separator
                         $word $sep        # and the second
                         $capture $sep     # capture next two words
                         $capture $sep     # skip the separators
                         $word             # skip a word
                        \z                 # and then it's the end of the string
                       }xms);
print join("\n", '**', @jam, '**', '');

##</code><code>##

my @jam = ( spit "\t", $ham )[2,3];