[OS X TeX] write18 and MacTeX-2007

[Jonathan Kew]

On 20 Mar 2008, at 11:21 pm, Mark Eli Kalderon wrote:

> Thanks all. Maarten's advice to run it on a need only basis seems  
> sound.
> Unfortunately I am not using pdflatex but xelatex. I tried -shell- 
> escape
> but it didn't work, and the options listed under xetex -help didn't
> reveal anything obviously analogous. Any ideas? (If not, will try over
> at the xetex mailing list.) Thanks again. Best, Mark

Running xe(la)tex with -shell-escape should work; does it not remark  
"\write18 enabled" when you do this? Or is it that the particular  
thing you're trying to do with \write18 doesn't work, even once it's  
enabled?

 >>>>>>> example <<<<<<<
$ xetex -shell-escape
This is XeTeXk, Version 3.141592-2.2-0.997 (Web2C 7.5.6)
  \write18 enabled.
  %&-line parsing enabled.
**\relax
entering extended mode

*\immediate\write18{uname -a}
Darwin Kew-PowerBookG4.local 8.11.0 Darwin Kernel Version 8.11.0: Wed  
Oct 10 18:26:00 PDT 2007; root:xnu-792.24.17~1/RELEASE_PPC Power  
Macintosh powerpc

*\end
No pages of output.
Transcript written on texput.log.
 >>>>>>>>> end <<<<<<<<<

JK