The s parameter contains a number of the form:

[ws][sign]digits[ws]

Elements in square brackets ([ and ]) are optional. The following table describes each element.

The s parameter is interpreted using the System.Globalization.NumberStyles.Integer style. In addition to decimal digits, only leading and trailing spaces together with a leading sign are allowed. To explicitly define the style elements that can be present in s, use either the long.Parse(string, System.Globalization.NumberStyles) or the long.Parse(string, System.Globalization.NumberStyles, IFormatProvider) method.

The s parameter is parsed using the formatting information in a System.Globalization.NumberFormatInfo object that is initialized for the current system culture. To parse a string using the formatting information of some other culture, use the long.Parse(string, System.Globalization.NumberStyles, IFormatProvider) method.

This example demonstrates parsing a string to a long.

using System;
public class Int64ParseClass {
  public static void Main() {
    string str = "  100   ";
    Console.WriteLine("String: \"{0}\" <Int64> {1}",str,Int64.Parse(str));
  }
}

The output is

String: " 100 " <Int64> 100