[plt-scheme] Scheme Programming Question (Making an error message)

Can anyone do this? This is my homework, and I am really having
trouble with it.
Can any smart scientist do this?




Question Details:
Exercise 13. For Assignment 4, you defined the procedure reverse-list.
A call to your version of reverse-list probably resulted in the
following sort of error when passed an invalid argument.



-------------------------------

(define combine-lists

  (lambda (a b)

    (if (null? a) b (combine-lists (cdr a) (cons (car a) b)))))



(define reverse-list

  (lambda (ls)

    (combine-lists ls '())))

---------------------------------



> (reverse-list 3)



Error in cdr: 3 is not a pair.

> (reverse-list '(a b . c))



Error in cdr: c is not a pair.



Define reverse-list using an internally defined help procedure. Have
the help procedure signal an error if the incoming argument is not a
pair or empty list. Your solution should make only one pass through
the list. In particular, you should not use list?, proper-list?, or
the equivalent to first check if the list is proper, since this would
count as an additional pass through the list. (Of course, you may use
the built-in pair? predicate.) (Naturally, you may not use the built-
in reverse procedure since the point of the exercise is to implement
that procedure.)



Identify the error as coming from reverse-list, not from the helper,
and show the original input to reverse-list in the error message, even
if the error occurs some iterations into the loop.



> (reverse-list 3)



Error in reverse-list: 3 is not a proper list.

> (reverse-list '(a . b))



Error in reverse-list: (a . b) is not a proper list.

> (reverse-list '(a b . c))



Error in reverse-list: (a b . c) is not a proper list.

> (reverse-list '(should it work? this does))

(does this work? it should)



Hint: The text of this exercise tells exactly how to detect the error.