I think we'd probably want a somewhat different API for this compared to what V8 currently ships, if it's not too late backwards compatibility-wise. The current API looks like this (more docs here: https://code.google.com/p/v8-i18n/wiki/BreakIterator):

Create a new break iterator with var instance = new Intl.v8BreakIterator(options)
Set the next with instance.adoptText()
Get information about the current iteration with instance.current() (for the index) and instance.breakType() (for a string representing the type, probably a CLDR thing)
Go to the next place with instance.next(), which returns the new current index.
Start at the beginning of the string again with instance.first().

I think a more ES2015-y way to do it would be to have a method instance.breakText("my string") on the instance which returns an iterator over the breaks in the string. Each item would be an object like {index: 1, breakType: "letter"}. To put the cherry on top, we should probably make the sole method breakText not be a bound function, unlike the current five-method API of bound functions, if this is the general strategy for new APIs.

A possible downside is that this could have worse performance (for the object allocation, and also for accounting for the case where multiple strings are being iterated over by the same instance at the same time), but I don't think this proposal would introduce further implications for a high-performance implementation compared to lots of other ES2015 features. It would also mean making a brand new iterator in place of first--would this be very bad performance-wise?

What do you all think of this general API shape?

The first step towards this will be unshipping Intl.v8BreakIterator in V8, as the standardized version will likely be incompatible. Current usage is low, but nonzero, so we'll see how this goes. If there are a lot of complaints, then maybe I'll want to argue for sticking to the current API; or maybe the complaining users would be happy to hear that if they are OK with the new API, then they'll get the support in more browsers.

I don't think I'll be able to write up a proposal for the March TC39 meeting unfortunately.

Intl.breakIterator #60

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