Function elem::isotopeTable()

Function Documentation

inline auto elem::isotopeTable() -> IsotopeTable&

Return a reference to the global isotope table.

The instance is a function-local static, so it is constructed on first use (reading data/elem/isotopes.h5) rather than before main() begins; this ensures that any exception thrown during construction (e.g. the data file can’t be found) is caught here rather than escaping before main() can run. There is no reasonable way for isotope/yield code to continue without a working isotope table, so a construction failure is treated as fatal: it is reported and the program exits immediately, rather than letting the exception propagate to callers that have no better way to handle it either. Being a local static in an inline function also guarantees a single, program-wide instance, rather than one per translation unit. Mirrors utils::rng()’s identical pattern in RngThread.hpp.