OK, so to set it up I'd like to admit I'm neither computer not programming, let alone UNIX, geek. I'm a dummy, hence all this confusion with used terminology etc. It's possibly that I may've misled myself and others, participating in this discussion, due to this reason, not just because I intended to, bear that in mind, please.

You wrote too much. Let me clear out some points:
1. I don't know exactly why and when did .bashrc disappear. Considering "deletion-reboot" connection it's just my guess based on my subject observations. Maybe the connection is not the case, maybe it's really a coincidence that I misinterpreted as a cause.

Further on
2. Really? Didn't have a clue of it. However I may misinterpret that statement once again but from "Learning UNIX for Mac OS X users" by Kevin Scoglund (by Lynda.com) I got impression that for commands from .bashrc to take effect you have to execute this file by running

Code:

source .bashrc

when in home directory (or

Code:

. ./.bashrc

- I think I foozled with the syntax in my last post considering this command, so stand corrected in this one). So, instead of running it multiple times when I launch Terminal or open its new window I just set it in Terminal Preferences to run it on bash shell's startup (see the screenshot - are we talking about the same thing?). It used to work - until it has gone.

3. I didn't execute in all my consciousness and right state of mind neither

Code:

rm -f

nor

Code:

rm

towards .bashrc file, that's for sure.

4. The main thing is that due to some unknown reasons the file got erased. I don't have a slightest explanation of this fact, I do however recall that some time ago I had a similar issue of unexpected deliberate erase (though I DON'T REMEMBER if it was the first occurrence of something deleting .bashrc or another file) because I copied and wrote down a Console's log referring to some pbs process.

The message was:

pbs[4781]: While watching paths {("/Users/iljashebalin/Library/")}, we got a change in path /Users/iljashebalin/Library/

Again, it's not my claim, rather my supposition that maybe something alike had hand in this case.