I stumbled across the Geo::Shape module on a web page for creating svg
from shapefiles using perl.

http://www.webmapper.net/svg/create/

It is really exciting to have the means in perl to access the geometry of shapefiles.
Thanks very much.

I am certain the layer has Z values. When the above code was
adjusted to read the zmax and zmin values. as suggested, it worked.
Curiously when I tried masspntz with the code the z values were read
successfully.

The environment I am running the script is cygwin. ( I can’t have a Unix
account at work ) and the module version is 0.01

My shapfile is from Arcgis and is a drainage layer polylineZM layer.

I will e-mail you the shapefile thanks very much for looking at this.

Penny