I've uploaded the backtrace analysis to http://www.vrana.cz/phpbug47689.zip

Hi Jakub,
please check the pcre.backtrack_limit and pcre.recursion_limit value.

Both configuration directives are on the default value 100000.

I've found out that with much longer input (600 lines) the script crashes also in CLI.

There's no crash in PHP 5.2.8, only PHP 5.2.9 is affected.

this is the usual stack problem.
Since we now use the stack for PCRE recursion on Windows, I think we could increase the stack size. The default (1 MB) is a little short..
Pierre: can you please increase the stack size on windows binaries to e.g. 8 MB? It's a matter of adding one parameter to the compile arguments.
More details at: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/tdkhxaks(VS.71).aspx

Please try using 5.3.0 VC9 snapshots(ts or NTS): http://windows.php.net

Same result with VC9 TS and 500 lines under CLI.

> Same result with VC9 TS and 500 lines under CLI.

500 lines? Not using the code you pasted here?

Same result also with the code pasted here under Apache 2.2.

Pierre, Nuno already gave the solution..? :)

Only wondering which impact has this change, have to test first before to increase the stack.

I'm experiencing similar crash on PHP 5.2.9-2, Apache 2.2.11, Vista 
SP2 
if I run simple code like:

<?php

  $content = '
  <!-- Book Navigation Start -->
  <div>
  <ul class="menu"><li class="collapsed first">Web Services</li>
  <li class="collapsed">Integration Tools</li>
  <li class="leaf">Developer Group</li>
  <li class="leaf last">Developer Forum</li>
  </ul>
    <div class="page-links clear-block">
        <a href="test/wws" class="page-next" title="Go to next page"> 
Web Services </a>
    </div>
  </div>
  <!-- Book Navigation End -->
  ';

  $pattern = '/<!-- Book Navigation Start -->((.|\s)+)<!-- Book 
Navigation End -->/i';

  preg_match($pattern, $content, $book_nav);
?>

However this works fine in PHP 5.2.8 and in CLI for 5.2.9-2.

That's not something we can change for apache. You can fix the problem by increasing the stack size for apache using the following command:

editbin /STACK:8000000 c:\apache22\bin\httpd.exe

Sadly this tool is not available as a standalone app but VC Express should have it.

Close (bogus) this bug as it is not something we can change in PHP. We can increase the stack at wish but it is apache dependent. FastCGI does not seem to have this problem (was not able to crash it).

Better way to alter Apache stack size is using the ThreadStackSize directive in the Apache's configuration file (httpd.conf). There is a description of the ThreadStackSize directive in Apache's documentation: http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.2/mod/mpm_common.html#ThreadStackSize

So increase of Apache stack size might looks like this (lines from httpd.conf):

<IfModule mpm_winnt_module>
   ThreadStackSize 8*1024*1024
</IfModule>

It sets Apache stack size to 8 MB, so it's the same as a default value on Linux.

It would be nice to add that to both apache 2.2 configuration and pcre docs.

This should be added to the PCRE(preg_match etc..) documentation. It had me clules for a long time as of what it going on.