Use the Sign(Long) method to determine the sign of a Long value and display it to the console.
Class Sample Public Shared Sub Main() Dim xLong1 As Long = -4 Console.WriteLine(xLong1) Console.WriteLine(Test(Math.Sign(xLong1))) End Sub Public Shared Function Test([compare] As Integer) As [String] If [compare] = 0 Then Return "equal to" ElseIf [compare] < 0 Then Return "less than" Else Return "greater than" End If End Function End Class