A representation error occurs when your program calls for the computation of some well-defined value that cannot be represented.
Most representation errors are some sort of overflow:
functor(T, f, 1000) % maximum arity is 255 atom_codes(X, L) % if length of L > 65535
are all representation errors. Floating-point overflow is a representation error.
The SICStus_Error term for a representation error is
representation_error(Goal, ArgNo, Message)
0
or
''
provides no further information.