(make.info.gz) Empty Recipes

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 5.9 Using Empty Recipes
 =======================
 
 It is sometimes useful to define recipes which do nothing.  This is done
 simply by giving a recipe that consists of nothing but whitespace.  For
 example:
 
      target: ;
 
 defines an empty recipe for `target'.  You could also use a line
 beginning with a recipe prefix character to define an empty recipe, but
 this would be confusing because such a line looks empty.
 
    You may be wondering why you would want to define a recipe that does
 nothing.  The only reason this is useful is to prevent a target from
 getting implicit recipes (from implicit rules or the `.DEFAULT' special
 target;  Implicit Rules and  Defining Last-Resort Default
 Rules Last Resort.).
 
    You may be inclined to define empty recipes for targets that are not
 actual files, but only exist so that their prerequisites can be remade.
 However, this is not the best way to do that, because the prerequisites
 may not be remade properly if the target file actually does exist.
  Phony Targets Phony Targets, for a better way to do this.
 
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