Can I drive a 5v LED without a current resistor?

[wellyboot]

Only ONE segment is ON at any instant in time

I get it now! completly missed the point that only 1 seg is lit.

Go display '8888' on a quad 7-segment display using the usual amateurish sloppy techniques of switching all the segments ON that you want at the same time and tell me how much current you pull... (7 segments, multipled by the number of digits, multiplied by say 10mA for each segment...). 7 x 4 x 10mA = 280mA... I've had so many laughs at some of the schematics and coding that I've seen for 7-segment displays...

I must admit ive just built a project that uses 4 x 7seg displays, and have wired in a way that only 1 display is lit at a time for 1ms, but have all the required segments on that 1 display light at the same time. So my circuit drawing around 50mA when measured with a meter.

Now ive seen the light!