Returning NULL for the string when we haven't signaled an error
condition is counter-intuitive and causes unnecessary edge
cases. Return an empty string when asking for a string value for a
configuration variable such as '[section] var' to avoid these edge
cases.

If the distinction between no value and an empty value is needed, this
can be retrieved from the entry directly. As a side-effect, this
change stops the int parsing functions from segfaulting on such a
variable.