But with the MS Windows explorer, it works as you expect. The target modification time is updated with the modification time of the new content.
OK but in that case it can't work in your "make example", too, right?
*But* the tricky case I was talking about is when the new modification time of the content of the .c file is still older than the modification time of the .o file. make does not see that something has been updated.
Yes, this is what I had in mind -- no one prevents copy tool to update modification time (when overwriting) to the current time, as the content is overwritten *now* and therefore 'make' would be happy and it still make sense (at least to me ;-) Modification time = when I modify the content = I'm doing it now (I'm overwriting it).