What is the difference in カタカナ between ー and ッ? They both seem to indicate a
pause of sorts, but ー only appears in カタカナ, but not in ひらがな.

宜しく御願いします！
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katakana
Difference in Katakana Characters
In katakana, the 「－」is not a pause, but rather an elongation of the vowel
sound. Lets take my last name (Smart) as an example. In Katakana, it is
written as スマート。Writing this in roman characters it would be "su ma a to"
(spaces added to correlate with the katakana characters.)

The katakana 「ッ」functions the same as other 「っ」characters in Japanese. There
is a short pause followed by a _slight_ emphasis of the consonant of the next
character (don't over emphasize it). Lets look at my first name as an example.
Alex, my first name, is written as アレックス。In roman characters it would be "a re
kku su". (Double consonant 'k' notates pause and _slight_ emphasis)

Just to be clear about the pause, its very short, to the point of being almost
nonexistent. This is something that you'll get accustomed to as you practice
with native speakers.

That being said, 「－」and 「ッ」are NOT interchangeable. My last name, cannot be
written as スマット。In this case, you would not elongate the 'a' in 'ma', and your
resulting sound would be "su ma tto." Though the sound is somewhat similar,
there is a significant difference between the two pronunciations.

> but ー only appears in カタカナ, but not in ひらがな.

In formal writing, you would be correct! Japanese words with foreign origins
are written in katakana, and often, there are elongated sounds that happen. My
last name (Smart), as discussed before, is one of those cases. This is why you
see 「－」 in katakana so often.

In words of Japanese origin, you do get elongated vowel sounds, but the
elongation is notated differently. The city of 大阪 is a great example, spelled
as おおさか、the 'o' gets elongated. Another example of this is 今日【きょう】、notice that
the 'o' is once again elongated, but this time it is followed by an う。Finally,
来週｛らいしゅう｝has an extended 'u,' and just as previously noted it was elongated by
the う。

That should cover the vowel elongations for formal writing, but in informal
writing, sometimes different vowel sounds are elongated. To understand that, I
recommend that you read [this
question.](https://japanese.stackexchange.com/q/47970/22352) **EDIT:** You'll
also find [this question](https://japanese.stackexchange.com/q/15062/22352)
interesting as well.

Hope it helps.
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