$re = '/comment_id=.*?(?=,)/';
$str = 'comments={ts=2010-02-09T04:05:20.777+0000, comment_id=529590, user_id = 2886, comment=\'LOL\', user= \'Baoping Wu\', post_commented=529360}';
preg_match_all($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