Normally you can t declare a var without assigning it a valu kotlinlang #getting-started

Normally you can't declare a var without assigning it a value; unless you state that it is a "lateinit" var. You can't declare a val withoutu assigning it a value too; but you can use "by lazy" to achieve that. BUT THEN Why in a { catch (e: Exception) } block I am allowed to define a val or a var and then assign it afterwards, without the need of "lateinit" nor "by lazy"?

diesieben07

11/26/2018, 12:52 PM

Your initial conception is not correct. The following works:

val a: String
if (condition) {
    a = "foo"
} else {
    a = "bar"
}

🤔 1

Can you give a concrete example of code you are confused about?

febs

11/26/2018, 12:54 PM

Thanks. Why then in most cases the IDE complains?

diesieben07

11/26/2018, 12:54 PM

That looks like a property. In that case you will have to put the initialization code inside an

init { }

block (or constructor), since you can't just write inside the class body.

So:

val antani: String
init {
    antani = "ciao"
}

😀 1

febs

11/26/2018, 12:56 PM

OK, thanks: so the behavior is different whether we are talking about a property or a "normal" var or val, right? If I got that correct, I'll dive deeper in that.

diesieben07

11/26/2018, 12:56 PM

What you call "normal" are local variables (inside function).

This has nothing to do with the initialization of val/var. It's just that you can't just have code inside a class body.

If you want initialization code for the instances of the class, you use the constructor or

init

In your code example the problem is not with the property, it is that your

antani = "ciao"

code cannot be put at that place.

febs

11/26/2018, 1:13 PM

Amazing replies, thank you so much

diesieben07

11/26/2018, 1:14 PM

No problem 🙂

#getting-started Join Slack