Kotlin Programming Cookbook

How to do it…

Let's follow the given steps to understand how the lateinit modifier works:

1. In Java, we could just declare a variable beforehand and initialize it later, but Kotlin requires you to initialize it as soon as you declare it (unless you are using special modifiers). So you can do the following:

var student:Student?=null

Alternatively, you can do this:

val student=Student()

Both ways have their drawbacks. The first way will require you to check nullability whenever you use it, and the second way of initializing will make it immutable.

2. To overcome limitations, we can use a lateinit modifier, with which we can declare it beforehand and initialize anywhere we want (but before we first access it). This is especially needed when you ...