How do I restore tab-completion on shell variables on the bash command-line?

I've long set my most-recently visited directories to shell variables d1, d2, etc.

On an ancient Fedora machine I could type a command like

$ cp $d1/

and the shell would replace $d1 with text like /home/acctname/projects/blog/ and would then show me the contents of .../blog, like you would expect any tab-completion to do.

Now, both ubuntu wheezy/sid and fedora 16 just \-escape the '$', and naturally there are no completions to show.

You can see this behavior in action in an OSX Terminal window. On 10.8, do something like

ls $HOME/ to see what I mean.

Is there a bash shell variable or option that can restore the old behavior?

man bash suggests this is a bug:

   complete (TAB)
          Attempt  to  perform  completion  on  the  text  before  point.  Bash
          attempts completion treating the text as  a  variable  (if  the  text
          begins  with  $),  username (if the text begins with ~), hostname (if
          the text begins with @), or command (including aliases and functions)
          in  turn.   If none of these produces a match, filename completion is
          attempted.

I get the above described completion when a token starts with '~' or a letter. It's just '$'-completion that's broken.

As of bash 4.2, this behavior is governed by

shopt -s direxpand # enable
shopt -u direxpand # disable

See http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/msg11251.html for background information.

Not quite sure if you are asking for a solution on your Mac or for *nix. If you are asking about changing your Mac, I just ran through this simple tutorial to upgrade my OSX bash from

GNU bash, version 3.2.57(1)-release (x86_64-apple-darwin15)
Copyright (C) 2007 Free Software Foundation, Inc.

to

GNU bash, version 4.3.42(1)-release (x86_64-apple-darwin15.0.0)
Copyright (C) 2013 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
License GPLv3+: GNU GPL version 3 or later <http://gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html>

This is free software; you are free to change and redistribute it.
There is NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by law.