Will 5V to input pin damage the Arduino board?

Question

I am fairly new to Arduino. When I am experimenting with circuits, do i need to worry about shorting out a pin if I accidentally connect the +5V pin on Arduino to an input pin on Arduino without a resistor? I just want to make sure I avoid destroying the board when learning how to create circuits.

Answer 1

No, no short. Arduino (Atmega) pins default to inputs. Pins configured this way are said to be in a high-impedance state. Input pins make extremely small demands on the circuit that they are sampling, equivalent to a series resistor of 100 megohm in front of the pin.

Answer provided by Look Alterno and converted from a comment.

Answer 2

Apply 5V directly, without any resistor:

5 V socket

it is directly connected to the regulator’s output, thus the 5 V to power external loads to Arduino can be drawn from it. In the case voltages are not applied to the USB Port or to the JACK socket, the 5 V socket can be even used to power Arduino directly, if having an external stabilized 5 V source. One has to consider that, in general, regulators do not like voltages being applied to their output, but in this particular case this situation turns out to happen even when powering Arduino from the USB port, therefore we may assume that the designers judged this problem as harmless. Even in this case there is no form of protection, since both the diode and the PTC fuse are found above this socket and thus they do not have any active function. As in the case of the Vin socket, the voltage negative pole can be found on the board’s GND sockets.

NOTE: regardless of the input used, Arduino has a 3.3 V output socket to power loads operating at this voltage; in fact a second regulator, right for the purpose of generating 3.3 V, is directly connected to the 5 V. This socket cannot be used as input.