How does this C program compile and run successfully?

Question

I was asked this in an interview. What will be the result of this program? I confidently said that this will not compile. I said that a is an array name and does not take up any space, so &a should not make any sense, hence this will not compile. but on hands-on, it turns out that compiles as well as runs successfully. Could someone please explain, how this works.

main()    
{
    int a[50];
    &a; // or perhaps the interviewer wanted to know the output of this line..
}

Answer 1

The &a; line just computes the address of the array a, and silently discards it.