make removed my source file

[Doug Gwyn]

In article <1025 at wubios.wustl.edu> david at wubios.UUCP (David J. Camp) writes:
>Here is what it did when I typed 'make':
>rm -f xxencode.c
>lex  -t xxencode.l > xxencode.c
>I do not understand why these commands were executed instead
>of the ones I specified in my Makefile.

"make" contains a built-in list of default rules (just which rules
varies from one implementation to another).  It appears in your case
that these was a built-in rule for making a .c from a .l.  You must
have had an xxencode.l file with a more recent mod time that xxencode.c.