won't recognize functions in script

[Ken Kinder]

"Carl" <kingprad at mail.com> wrote in message news:<3cd9958d at news.cc.umr.edu>...
<snip>
> I'm writing a simple text file processing program which at this stage just
> is reading characters and getting their ascii values. When I define
> functions python gives me 'NameError: name 'ascii_val' is not defined 
<snip>

Carl, please post your entire source code. The snipped you posted is
not enough to determine what was going on.