What does the "-->" notation mean in the output of ifconfig?

I have a VPN connection set up on my OS X machine, and when I run ifconfig in the terminal I get the following response:

utun0: flags=8051<UP,POINTOPOINT,RUNNING,MULTICAST> mtu 1500
    inet 10.8.0.6 --> 10.8.0.5 netmask 0xffffffff 

Can someone help me understand what the --> symbol means?

Most likely the default gateway for that interface. TUN connections usually are p2p connections, which mean they are composed of a range with just 2 IPs, the gateway and the IP address.

You can verify that running route -n and seeing that the default gateway for your tun interface is indeed 10.8.0.5.