The following message is a courtesy copy of an article that has been posted to gmane.linux.debian.devel.tetex as well.
Frank Küster <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > Norbert Preining <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > >> Therefor I suggest an appropriate error message, when the epstopdf >> packages is used in latex documents, but `\write18' is disabled. In >> addition an example of how to enable it (example: pdflatex -shell-escape >> test.tex) would be very helpful. > > Does anybody on the list know how to check whether \write18 is enabled > in a TeX document? This page <http://groups.google.co.uk/group/comp.text.tex/browse_thread/thread/c843abf7f2f476b7/361e72f2028b7798?lnk=st&q=test+%5Cwrite18+enabled&rnum=2#361e72f2028b7798> gives one possibility: \def\tmpfile{/tmp/w18-test-\the\year\the\month\the\day\the\time} \immediate\write18{touch \tmpfile} \IfFileExists{\tmpfile}{\message{YES}}{\message{NO}} but one should really check \tmpfile didnt exist before the 'touch', and maybe get rid of \tmpfile afterwards (which has possible security risks i suppose). And as Ralf said this is non-portable: 'touch' wouldnt work in miktex (i dont know if windows even has an equivalent command), and nor is -shell-escape the correct option for turning on \write18 under miktex...
