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Do you ever wonder what is happening when you login to a BASH shell. Why "ll" command works only on your office machine?? This article will give you a breif outlook on bash startup files. When you login the first file that is checked in your home directory is "~.bash_profile".
~ means your home directory.  This file will decide what all files have to be read during startup or the pragrams/commands to run when you login to bash.  A sample ".bash_profile"

# .bash_profile
# Get the aliases and functions
if [ -f ~/.bashrc ]; then . ~/.bashrc fi
# User specific environment and startup programs PATH=$PATH:$HOME/bin export PATH unset USERNAME

Next file is "~.bashrc", which is also inside your home directory.  Remeber about "ll" ("ll" is actually an alias to "ls -l").  It is set in this file. A sample ".bashrc"

# .bashrc
# User specific aliases and functions
alias ll='ls -l' alias rm='rm -i'
alias cp='cp -i'
alias mv='mv -i'
# Source global definitions
if [ -f /etc/bashrc ]; then /etc/bashrc fi

Please note alias must be set on this file only. Because this is the only file read when we open a terminal from "Gnome or KDE or any other desktop environment". Next one is "~.bash_logout" . As the file says, we can specify commands that has to be run during when logout. See a sample ".bash_logout"

# ~/.bash_logout clear

A small trick … want to delete history during log out . . . :) Add the following to .bash_logout

echo "" > ~.bash_history

Thanks