Executing the provided code using PHP 5.4 produces a segmentation fault (core dumped).

PHP v5.3 executes the code correctly.
PHP v5.4 binary for Windows executes the code correctly.
PHP v5.4 from ftp.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/ports/amd64/packages-8-stable/Latest/ or compiled from lang/php5 fails with a segmentation fault.

This issue has been tested in FreeBSD 8.3-RELEASE and 9.1-RELEASE.

gdb indicates that the issue is related to libpcre:

Program terminated with signal 11, Segmentation fault.
#0  0x0000000800d5ab5d in match () from /usr/local/lib/libpcre.so.3

How-To-Repeat: Create a file with the following php code and execute from the command line:
# php -n ./test.php

[php]

$code = '<!--' . str_repeat('x', 5438) . '-->';
$result = preg_replace('/(<!--)(?!\s*(?:\[if [^\]]+]|<!|>))((?:(?!-->).)*[^\]])(-->)/is', '', $code);
echo strlen($result);

[/php]


Expected result: 0

Actual result: Segmentation fault (core dumped)

Note: Change the value of str_repeat from 5438 to 5437 and no segmentation fault occurs.