There is a very important programming principle: DRY – Don’t repeat yourself.
Whenever you realize you are repeating almost the same job try to write an abstraction.
For your pad* shortcodes this means:
function get_padding( $atts )
{
$args = shortcode_atts(
array( 'num' => 10 ),
$atts
);
return str_repeat( ' ', (int) $args['num'] );
}
add_shortcode('pad', 'get_padding');
Now you can use the shortcode [pad] like this:
[pad num=5]
[pad num=10]
[pad num=12000]
[pad num=18]
The advantage is: if you decide to change the inner logic of your shortcodes you have to touch just one function, not a dozen.
See also this answer.
There is another possibility: Use one callback for multiple shortcodes. This uses the third parameter each shortcode callback gets.
function multipass( $atts, $content="", $shortcode="" )
{
$args = shortcode_atts(
array (
'name' => 'example'
),
$atts
);
$name = esc_attr( $args['name'] );
$content = esc_textarea( $content );
if ( 'textarea' === $shortcode )
return "<textarea name="$name">$content</textarea>";
if ( 'input' === $shortcode )
return "<input name="$name" value="$content" />";
}
add_shortcode( 'textarea', 'multipass' );
add_shortcode( 'input', 'multipass' );