Kotlin - splitting a string into individual characters

SplitString.kt

val string: String = "abcd"
val splitString: List<String> = string.map { it.toString() }

/*
EXPLANATION:
A) In Java, the output of the code:
        String str = "abcd";
        String[] splitString = str.split("");
        System.out.println(Arrays.toString(splitString));
        System.out.println(splitString[0].getClass());
        System.out.println(splitString.length);
   is:
        [a, b, c, d]        // original string is split into _array_ of strings
        class java.lang.String
        4                   // length of the resulting array
        
B) In Kotlin, the output of the naive-translation-of-java-code:
        val str = "abcd"
        val splitString: List<String> = str.split("")
        println(splitString)
        println(splitString[0]::class.qualifiedName)
        println(splitString.size)

   is:                      // original string is split into _list_ of strings AND
        [, a, b, c, d, ]    // first and last element of this list are "" (empty strings)
        kotlin.String       
        6                   // length of the resulting list
        
THUS, 
to get the result similar to the java code, 
one should use: str.map { it.toString() }
*/