How can you change the value of a mutable list/map/array when its defined as a val type in Kotlin

Question

I'm new to Kotlin and I've been reading a lot about how val is read-only and var is mutable. That's fine i get it. But what's confusing is when you create a mutable lsit/map/array and you've assigned it as a val, how is it allowed to be mutable? Doesn't that change the read-only aspect of val properties/variables/objects?

Answer 1

class MyObject {
    val a = mutableListOf<String>()
}

means that the field for a is final, and there is no setter for a.

You thus can't do

myObject.a = anotherList

It says nothing about the mutability of the list itself. Since the list is mutable, you can do

myObject.a.add("foo")