[XeTeX] \write18 in xetex

[Michael Gedalin]

It seems to me that xetex does not support \write18 (--shell-escape). 
The same simple test file

\documentclass[11pt]{article}
\begin{document}
test
\write18{ls -l}
  \end{document}

does what it is supposed to do when pdftex'ed and does not when 
xetex'ed. Yet xetex --help says -shell-escape can be enabled.


******************************************
* Michael Gedalin
* Department of Physics
* Ben-Gurion University
* 84105 Beer-Sheva, Israel
* tel: 972-8-6461645
* fax: 972-8-6472904
* email: gedalin at bgumail.bgu.ac.il
* http://burster.bgu.ac.il/~gedalin
*******************************************