Apache / PHP on Windows crashes with regular expression
It's always a good idea to lower "pcre.recursion_limit", because the default high value can corrupt the process stack (see http://php.net/manual/en/pcre.configuration.php) - this is exactly what happens with your mod_php install. Since preg functions don't throw an error when recursion/backtracking limits are reached, it may be useful to have a wrapper like
function match($re, $text) {
preg_match($re, $text, $m);
if(preg_last_error())
trigger_error("preg: " . preg_last_error());
return $m;
}
At least, this lets you know when something goes wrong.
Besides that, try to simplify your patterns when possible, for example /^\d[\d,]*\d$/
does the same as above, but with zero recursion.