scala append to a mutable LinkedList

Question

Please check this

import scala.collection.mutable.LinkedList

var l = new LinkedList[String]

l append LinkedList("abc", "asd")

println(l)
// prints 
// LinkedList()

but

import scala.collection.mutable.LinkedList

var l = new LinkedList[String]

l = LinkedList("x")
l append LinkedList("abc", "asd")

println(l)
// prints 
// LinkedList(x, abc, asd)

Why does the second code snippet works but the first one doesnt? This is on Scala 2.10

Answer 1

The documentation says If this is empty then it does nothing and returns that. Otherwise, appends that to this.. That is exactly, what you observed. If you really need a mutable list, I would suggest you to use scala.collection.mutable.ListBuffer instead, with it you can do

val lb = new ListBuffer[Int]

scala> lb += 1
res14: lb.type = ListBuffer(1)

scala> lb
res15: scala.collection.mutable.ListBuffer[Int] = ListBuffer(1)

scala> lb ++= Seq(1,2,3)
res17: lb.type = ListBuffer(1, 1, 2, 3, 1, 2, 3)

scala> lb
res18: scala.collection.mutable.ListBuffer[Int] = ListBuffer(1, 1, 2, 3, 1, 2, 3)