Number vs figure

["Janet Valade" <jvalade1 -at- san -dot- rr -dot- com>]

I am working with someone who is translating some of my writing into French.
He has a comment about the following text.

Variable names must begin with a letter or an underscore. They cannot begin
with a number.

He has the following question: Do'nt you think that "They cannot begin with
a figure."
       should be better than "They cannot begin with a number."

He also says:
I'm using three different english-french dictionaries (Harrap's, Collins and
Hachette on line). In all these books, the first item for "figure" is
"chiffre"
(which you could translate in "digit"). Moreover, "The American Heritage
Dictionary of the English Language" by Houghton and Millfin tells :
"A written symbol representing anything other than a letter; especially
a number."

He is correct about the American Heritage Dictionary, which I have too.
However, my feeling is still that this is not common usage in English. At
least in US English. I feel that using figure, instead of number, would
sound odd in a computer book. Although I have no idea what the correct
French word would be.

I thought I would get an opinion from some other folks about this.

Janet




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