The string function in a sprinter may be called with a NULL string
pointer (eg if a header is absent). This causes a segfault. We fix
this by checking for a null pointer in the string functions and update
the sprinter documentation.
At the moment some output when format=text is done directly rather than
via an sprinter: in that case a null pointer is passed to printf or
similar and a "(null)" appears in the output. That behaviour is not
changed in this patch.
