Please pay great attention to the **$length** parameter! It is exactly the **return string length**, NOT the length of raw binary hash result.
I had a big problem about this --
I thought that `hash_pbkdf2(...false)` should equals to `bin2hex(hash_pbkdf2(...true))` just like `md5($x)` equals `bin2hex(md5($x, true))`. However I was wrong:
hash_pbkdf2('sha256', '123456', 'abc', 10000, 50, false); // returns string(50) "584bc5b41005169f1fa15177edb78d75f9846afc466a4bae05"
hash_pbkdf2('sha256', '123456', 'abc', 10000, 50, true); // returns string(50) "XKŴ��Qw�u��j�FjK���BFW�YpG �mp.g2�`;N�"
bin2hex(hash_pbkdf2('sha256', '123456', 'abc', 10000, 50, true)); // returns string(100) "584bc5b41005169f1fa15177edb78d75f9846afc466a4bae05119c82424657c81b5970471f098a6d702e6732b7603b194efe"
So I add such a note. Hope it will help someone else like me.