Again, I don't think this is a bug, it's probably intentional, it's just that some people don't like it.
Let's say the current dir contains a file 'this is a file'.
Pressing "vi thi<tab>" will produce "vi this\ is\ a\ file". What should happen, if the filename contains a $ ? Do we need to protect those strange chars? I think the perfect solution would cost a lot (that means you need to wait a lot for the completion).
completion itself is not bash, but an external "plugin", which will be invoked when you want to complete your command. But it has a long story. And yes, there can be a bug in bash too.

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Fascinating!

Unfortunately I am too new to quickly understand or apply or test most conceivable fixes. So most of the time I back up everything and switch to a new distro and trade any one problem for another. Wish I learned this stuff decades ago. I'll be with yous in a decade.

I do not think it is a common practice. Generally, I find ctrl-r command history search good for "cd" to a recently used dir. And if there's somewhere I need to work on heavily for a while, I'll symlink in my home directory (ln -s PathToTheDirectory).

Note that tab completion with a symlink acts slightly differently from a true folder. But you get used to it quickly enough.

Managing variables to be directory paths just seems like a lot of annoying work to me. I mean ... if I make a symlink it's there forever until I delete it. It exists across all sessions, and if I change it, it's changed across all sessions.

Setting variables every session? Having multiple terminal windows with all different variables set differently if I am changing things? Ugh. That does not sound pleasant to me.

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THIS! thank you! I will now put more energy into learning to search the history. Any more basic power tips would be wonderful. My current workflow is very cumbersome and I know I'm wasting time on things an expert would not.

First tip - ctrl-r for command history search. Each user has a bash command history, which you've probably noticed you can access by pressing UP ARROW and DOWN ARROW. Command history search simply lets you really quickly find a previously typed in command by substring search.

You just type CTRL-R and then start typing the string you wish to search for. It will first show you the most recent usage. Press CTRL-R more times to find older usages.

So let's say I had typed in

some time in the past. I don't feel like typing the whole thing again so instead I press CTRL-R and then Data1000 to find it. At that point, I may edit the command or simply press Enter.

Second tip - symlinks

You can quickly create a symlink in two ways:

The first way simply names the symlink the same thing as the target (in this case, "saves"). The second way explicitly gives a different name for the symlink. In this case, I may want that because there's already a "saves" symlink or I with to know more at a glance about where it's pointed to. Or maybe I've set up a script that assumes a particular symlink name.

Either way, you can see the target of a symlink with "ls -l".

There is a gotcha with using symlinks, though. When you start doing "stuff" inside a symlink, bash really does think of its current path as using the symlink, not the original path. This can potentially cause weird issues for other users who don't have the same symlink, or on other computers where you don't have the same symlink.

To avoid that, use the -P flag. Here's an example:
I have a symlink in my home folder named "c64stuff".

In the first case, after I "cd" to it, my current path is /home/kuo/c64stuff. If I do anything that references that path, it might be broken later if I delete or change that symlink.

In the second case, after I "cd -P" to it, my current path is /home/kuo/tempo/working/dev/c64/c64stuff. Oof, that would have been a lot of typing/tabbing! But now, anything that references the current path doesn't care if I later delete or change the symlink.

The "-P" flag is most useful if you are just setting up some temporary symlinks to conveniently "get to" a path that you wish to work on for some time.

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Awesome! I was struggling with symlinks until I started using Should there be a command line nav thread?

All this time I could have had symlinks in ~ Thank you all, this is gold

Back to the $var <tab> \$var problem.

Try to upgrade or downgrade your bash package!

I think you have to wait for a bug fix.
In the meantime, try out the zsh shell.

starts a zsh and tries to emulate bash. (exit or ^D will return to the parent shell)
Then try-out the $var <tab> there!
And enjoy the cursor-up! It leaves a multi-line (e.g. a loop) untouched. Unlike bash that re-formats it "inline" (and there are bugs with it).

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If I have frequent cmds to run and or dirs I need to get to easily, I use an alias in my .bashrc eg
and then invoke the alias as a cmd.