Clarification regarding key remappings

[Sabercyclone]

I'm currently setting up Retropie on a Raspberry Pi 3B+ and I'm slightly confused regarding the syntax for key mapping files.

I doubt this will be necessary, but I'm running Retropie 4.8, on a Raspberry Pi 3B+, with a 16Gb SD card, and using this as the case and controller, with the inluced power supply as listed.

I'm starting with the Megadrive to get the hang of things and for legal disclaimer purposes, I do own vintage physical copies of both games I'm working with (which to the surprise of no one have lasted longer than my consoles have). I'm currently working on the retroarch.cfg file in "/opt/retropie/configs/megadrive/", however I'm slightly confused. My system is listing the buttons with inverted commas around them, eg:

input_player1_joypad_index = "0"

However this guide , lists the same command line as:

input_player1_joypad_index = 0

Common sense says to disregard this part of the guide and simply list the button input values with inverted commas, ie:

input_player1_b_btn = "1"

instead of

input_player1_b_btn = 1

However Murphy's Law tells me that if I assume this is the case and don't ask, I'll be wrong.

Am I correct in thinking that I should just disregard this aspect of the guide?

Also, and this is more of a personal preference question. Suppose for the sake of argument, that we were to number the buttons on a 6 button arcade-style controller as 4,5,6;1,2,3 (left to right, top to bottom). Mapping the input menu button toggle as button 1 does make sense, however I'm wondering in people's experience, whether they find that mapping the save and load buttons to 6 and 5 respectively works for them, or if they've found that another configuration works better

[sleve_mcdichael]

input_player1_b_btn = "1"

instead of

input_player1_b_btn = 1

@Sabercyclone for numerical values like that, it works equally well with or without the quotation marks. If the value is a string containing spaces or certain other special characters, the quotes may be required.

[Sabercyclone]

@sleve_mcdichael Thanks for the clarification. I think I'll just use quotes anyways since, it sounds like it's a good habit to get into for more complex data like strings.