$re = '~<(\d+)>\h*(\d+(?:\.\d+)?)\h*</\h*\1>~m';
$str = '<5> 20825.24 </ 5> <7> 0.0 </ 7> <8> 0.0 </ 8>';
preg_match_all($re, $str, $matches, PREG_SET_ORDER, 0);
// Print the entire match result
var_dump($matches);
Please keep in mind that these code samples are automatically generated and are not guaranteed to work. If you find any syntax errors, feel free to submit a bug report. For a full regex reference for PHP, please visit: http://php.net/manual/en/ref.pcre.php