odd Makefile construct - anyone know why?

[Zack Weinberg]

In a large number of places we have Makefile constructs such as

	$(CC) -c $(ALL_CFLAGS) $(ALL_CPPFLAGS) $(INCLUDES) $(BIG_SWITCHFLAG) \
  `echo $(PARSE_C) | sed 's,^\./,,'`

Does anyone know the reason for the `echo | sed` bit?  I know it
deletes a './' from the beginning of whatever $(PARSE_C) is, but I
cannot figure out why that would be necessary.  This is done whenever
we override the suffix rule for compiling a file.

zw