Setting Path ENV variable

[Andy Thomas]

 Hi,
 Running Linux from O'Reilly says that the search path can be set in
.bashrc
 file, but the only .bashrc I'm finding is for a user I created, not root. 
 Is there a bash configuration file for root?  I'm trying to add some
 directories to the search path.
 
 I found a file named /etc/profile with a PATH statement in it, but
attempts
 to add to that don't work.   The comment at the top says it's the
 system-wide profile for bash(1)
 
 
 TIA
 Andy