So I'm reading some documentation on Drupal, and I come across this example:

```
$result = db_select('contact', 'c')
    ->fields('c')
    ->execute()
    ->fetchAssoc();

```

Now, I get that you're assigning the result from a function to the $result variable, but why are there arrows after this? Those are normally used to refer to the properties of an object, if I recall correctly - is that what is going on here? That doesn't seem like it would make sense to me though. This may be ignorance on my part though - but I'm not seeing any documentation on this specific effect.

How should I be reading this example?