title: What does the arrow ("->") operator do in Kotlin?
body: <p>Probably a little bit broad question, but the official documentation doesn't even mentioning the arrow operator (or language construct, I don't know which phrase is more accurate) as an independent entity.</p>
  
  <p>The most obvious use is the when conditional statement, where it is used to assign an expression to a specific condition:</p>
  
  <pre><code>  val greet = when(args[0]) {
      "Appul" -&gt; "howdy!"
      "Orang" -&gt; "wazzup?"
      "Banan" -&gt; "bonjur!"
      else    -&gt; "hi!"
    }
  
    println(args[0] +" greets you: \""+ greet +"\"")
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>What are the other uses, and what are they do?
  Is there a general meaning of the arrow operator in Kotlin?</p>