Intermediate files in make's terminology is a file needed somewhere on way from a source file to
target file. An examples is a file.c needed to create file.o from file.y (YACC source). From
that principle, an intermediate file is needed only once to generate the target after the source
changed and thus can be removed after it was used. Therefore, an intermediate file which did not
exist before make also does not exist after make (see [gnu_rule_chains]). In other words,
make removes the intermediate files it needed to create (unless .SECONDARY or .PRECIOUS is
used). For details refer to [gnu_rule_chains].
That being said, the use of explicit intermediate files (i.e. .INTERMEDIATE) is rarely needed. Often one either really
wants to see the itermediate files too (thus making explicit targets and dependencies and remove