As a
symbol, an
arrow indicates
direction or
reference. The arrow symbol does not look terribly much like the weapon which
Tsarren describes; it looks more or less like this:
->
Direction: Arrows are commonly used in traffic signs and other direction-giving signs to indicate the way in which one should travel in order to reach a given destination. The name of the destination commonly accompanies the arrow, as such:
<- Library
Sheep Shop ->
... thus indicating that one should turn
left to reach the
library, or
right to reach the
sheep shop.
Arrows can indicate not only the direction in which you should go, but also the direction in which something is already going -- for instance, the wind (in a weather report), water current, or the like. In chemical equations they indicate the way in which a reaction under consideration proceeds.
Reference: Arrows can also indicate that one intends to make reference to a term or an idea. For instance, when making annotations in the margin of an article or book, people often draw arrows to connect the annotation to the phrase upon which it comments.
Arrows are used to denote reference in C and related programming languages. The arrow operator, ->, also known as the member dereference operator, is used to refer to an element of a struct (or object) which is pointed to by a pointer.