A tiny Scala case class to clean up user input

We needed some cleaning up of user input entered into a text field. We ended up with a Scala case class that cleans up its constructor string argument a bit, by removing multiple whitespace characters and trimming it. It behaves like this:

scala> Text("    a       a      ") == Text("a a")                                                                
res0: Boolean = true
scala> Text("   a      a       ").text == Text("a a").text                                                      
res1: Boolean = true
scala> Text("  a     a    ").text          
res2: java.lang.String = a a

The code looks like this:

case class Text(private var _text: String) {
 val text = _text.trim.replaceAll(" +", " ")
 _text = text
}

Since the input string, var _text, is private, we can manipulate it a bit, without making it possible for others to tamper with. I'm not sure if this is the obvious way to do it, but it seems to work as intended.

We tried a similar version that did not work:

// Doesn't work
case class BrokenText(private var _text: String) {
  _text = _text.trim.replaceAll(" +", " ")
  val text = _text
}

This version does not work since Text.text will return the original string, not the cleaned up one:

scala> BrokenText("    a      b      ")
res0: BrokenText = BrokenText(a b)
scala> res0.text
res1: String =     a      b    
scala>

Why the second version doesn't work? Beats me. (But I'm sure the answer will turn out to be obvious.)

Update: See the two anonymous comments below: one answering my question above, the other one suggesting a neater way of handling it. Thanks.