From the C standard:
The left operand of a comma operator is evaluated as a void expression; there is a sequence point after its evaluation. Then the right operand is evaluated; the result has its type and value. (A comma operator does not yield an lvalue.)) If an attempt is made to modify the result of a comma operator or to access it after the next sequence point, the behavior is undefined.
In short it let you specify more than one expression where C expects only one. But in practice it's mostly used in for loops.
Note that:
int a, b, c;
is NOT the comma operator, it's a list of declarators.