C: Does the address operator (&) produce a pointer (address + type) or just an address?

Question

Most of what I\'ve read about the address operator, &, says it\'s used to get just that - an address. I recently heard it described differently, though, as

Answer 1

The & operator simply returns a pointer to its operand. If its operand was an int the resulting type will be int*. If its operand was an int* the resulting type will be int**. For example, this program:

#include 

struct test {
  int a;
  int b;
  int d;
};

int main ( ) { 
    struct test foo = { 0, 0, 0 } ; 
    printf( "%lu\n", (unsigned long)(&foo + 2) - (unsigned long)&foo );
}

Outputs 24 on my machine because the sizeof(struct test) is 12, and the type of &foo is known to be struct test *, so &foo + 2 calculates an offset of two struct tests.