Ruby if else statement [closed] - ruby

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I am being asked to:
Define a method called first_longer_than_second with a parameter called first and another called second. The method will return true if the first word passed in is greater than or equal to the length of the second word. It returns false otherwise.
This is the code I have come up with:
def first_longer_than_second(first, second)
if first >= second
return true;
else
return false;
end
end
The calls I am making:
first_longer_than_second('pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis', 'k') #=> false
first_longer_than_second('apple', 'prune') #=> true
For some reason on repl.it I only get the output false
And i get this error message on the platform I am actually meant to be completing this task on:
expected #<TrueClass:20> => true
got #<FalseClass:0> => false
Compared using equal?, which compares object identity,
but expected and actual are not the same object. Use
`expect(actual).to eq(expected)` if you don't care about
object identity in this example.
exercise_spec.rb:42:in `block (2 levels) in <top (required)>'
Tried a number of things, but annoyingly stuck with something that seems should be simple...

Answer 1

Define a method called first_longer_than_second with a parameter called first and another called second. The method will return true if the first word passed in is greater than or equal to the length of the second word. It returns false otherwise.
Your code:
def first_longer_than_second(first, second)
if first >= second
return true;
else
return false;
end
end
First of all, your code doesn't follow the requirements. They ask to compare the lengths of the two arguments. The if condition should be:
if first.length >= second.length
See the documentation of String#length.
Regarding the syntax of Ruby, the semicolons (;) after the statements are not needed. Like in Javascript, a Ruby statement can be terminated using a semicolon but also a newline. The semicolon is useful to separate two statements on the same line.
Next, the same as in Javascript (and many other languages), you can directly return the result of the comparison (and not put it into an if statement that returns true/false):
def first_longer_than_second(first, second)
return first.length >= second.length
end
One last improvement to make it look like Ruby (and not Javascript or PHP): a Ruby function returns the value of the last expression it computes; this makes the presence of the return keyword superfluous here.
Your code should be:
def first_longer_than_second(first, second)
first.length >= second.length
end