It is used in conjunction with the Shift() command. The Shift() command moves the magnetization in a particular direction (say, 1 cell to the right). When you do so, you need to tell mumax what to put into the new empty cells created on the left edge. shiftMagL (as well as shiftmagR etc) does this. You can see an example of this on the example page here, under the spinning hard disk example:
https://mumax.github.io/examples.htmlIn that example, they shift every cell of the magnetization to the left by 1 cell, which means there will be a new edge 1 cell thick on the right. They use "shiftMagR= vector(0,0,1)" to say that those cells on that edge should be set to a 0,0,1 magnetization. This is what would happen if you were actually moving on a uniformly magnetized hard disk.
Best,
Josh L.