Did I fry my npn transistor?

[atoff]

I used to know this stuff better than I do now, but at the risk of asking a stupid question... I was matching a bunch of NPN transistors, and mistakenly stuck one into the PNP side of the multimeter.  Put it back into the NPN and it was a little fiddly in giving me a reading, but did... did I cause any damage?   All I have left is as many as I need to finish my projects, otherwise I'd just toss it.

[nocentelli]

No, it's not going to be damaged hooking it up incorrectly to a meter. Silicon bipolar transistors are pretty hardy and are unlikely to be damaged even if you apply voltage to the "wrong" pins, e.g. put them into a circuit with the incorrect pinout, or npn instead of pnp. JFETs seem to also be quite durable: A MOS-FET is the only transistor device that I am super careful with, and they usually have an accompanying source->drain diode in circuit to reduce the chance of accidently zapping them.

[atoff]

Perfect, thanks for clearing that up!

[antonis]

Just to add something on leo's post...

Meters perform diode measurement at low voltage and ultra low "restricted" current so there isn't any chance to damage a BJT...