NIMBLE provides various functions to give information about a BUGS distribution. In some cases, functions of the same name and similar functionality operate on the node(s) of a model as well (see help(modelBaseClass)
).
getDistributionInfo
returns an internal data structure (a reference class object) providing various information about the distribution. The output is not very user-friendly, but does contain all of the information that NIMBLE has about the distribution.
isDiscrete
tests if a BUGS distribution is a discrete distribution.
isUserDefined
tests if a BUGS distribution is a user-defined distribution.
pqAvail
tests if a BUGS distribution provides distribution ('p') and quantile ('q') functions.
getDimension
provides the dimension of the value and/or parameters of a BUGS distribution. The return value is a numeric vector with an element for each parameter/value requested.
getType
provides the type (numeric, logical, integer) of the value and/or parameters of a BUGS distribution. The return value is a character vector with an element for each parameter/value requested. At present, all quantities are stored as numeric (double) values, so this function is of little practical use but could be exploited in the future.
getParamNames
provides the value and/or parameter names of a BUGS distribution.