File not found: file is in ~/Library but not on 'This Mac' A program i run cannot find a specific file. The file is right there where it is supposed to be. When i use Finder to locate it:


it is found if i tell it to look in ~/Library
it cannot be found when i tell it to look in 'This Mac'


Surely ~/Library is on 'This Mac', so everything in it is also on 'This Mac'?

It is not a matter of user rights, the file cannot be found looking in /Users/myname. I have used chmod to set the rights: -rwxr-xr-x
Other files of this type, at the same location are found without a problem. Is there some invisible OSX setting i am missing?

The program is latex, the file is a .bst file, located in its own directory in the ~/Libraray/texmf/tex/latex/ directory. I'm still running OSX 10.5.8.
Spotlight is intended to let users find their own files; since the Library folder normally contains files the user doesn't need to (and indeed shouldn't) access manually, it's left out of the search results (along with other "system files"). You can find files in it by either searching it explicitly (as you mention), or by telling spotlight to include system files in its results (see Apple's KB article #HT4355 -- note that it only mentions OS X 10.6, but the same procedure works in 10.7 and 10.8 as well).