.PRECIOUS and .SECONDARY do not overlap?

[Mark Galeck (CW)]

Hello,

The manual says:

.PRECIOUS
(.) if the target is an intermediate file, it will not be deleted after it is 
no longer needed, as is normally done. (.) In this latter respect it overlaps 
with the .SECONDARY special target.

This does not appear to work:

with this makefile:


%/foobar: | %/.
        touch $@        

.SECONDARY: %/.
%/.:
        mkdir -p $@


I get an attempt at removal:
address@hidden: make subdir/foobar
mkdir -p subdir/.
touch subdir/foobar
rm subdir/.make: unlink: subdir/.: Is a directory

If I replace ".SECONDARY" with ".PRECIOUS", then everything works fine.


??

Mark