I don't know where you came across the
function, but a very quick search shows that it requires the Mapping toolbox so if you don't have this toolbox installed or licensed then you don't have access to it.
Even just typing
shaperead
on command line in recent versions of Matlab tells you:
though I don't think old versions of Matlab used to do this (almost certainly, I think, not back in 2013 when this question was originally asked)
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