using <?php wp_list_pages(‘exclude – do sidebar widgets make this obsolete?

g’day-

I’m still pretty n00bie but how good is wordpress! I’m trying to exclude some pages on a website using the following command in my sidebar.php found here:

http://codex.wordpress.org/Template_Tags/wp_list_pages

<?php
wp_list_pages(‘exclude=17,38’ ); ?>

It doesn’t seem to work – i’ve noticed even if I delete the entire function wp_list_pages it doesn’t effect my site – is this because I use sidebar widgets? If it is due to sidebar widgets, is there a way to exclude certain pages from the sidebar?

I’m using the default theme, WP version 2.1.3

thanks,
Ross