Unwanted blank after command line <tab> expansion

[MR ZenWiz]

I believe this is new behavior in Xubuntu 22.04.1 since either 21.10
or 22.04.0, but I'm willing to be wrong.

I notice that when I type in a command with part of a variable
expansion set up to be expanded and add <tab>, the full name of the
variable is completed (after the leading $) with a blank space
appended on the line before I type anything else.

When the variable is a stand-alone entity that is not a directory name
this isn't too annoying.

However, when the variable contains the name of a directory, that
space forces me to backspace in order to put a / after the directory
variable name to use it as such.

I'm fairly sure that, at least as of 21.10, the normal expansion
appended the slash by default if the variable contains a directory
name. It might not have appended the slash or any other character -
don't recall anymore.

Is there a bash option to control this, or something I can set to
force it NOT to append a space?

I tried Googling this and looking through the (massive) bash man page
and couldn't identify anything that looked appropriate.

Thanks.

Mark