Feature Request - Enable caller to derive hash with plaintext password and header data

[michaeljgray-sfdc]

Current Functionality:
The class allows the caller to specify some header information such as iteration count, block size, and thread count, but not the salt. This makes it unusable for some credential verification workflows that require the application to derive the hash from header data for comparison in another system, service, or in-database.

Proposed Additional Functionality:
I'd like to either see the salt be made an optional parameter in a constructor overload or an overload to the Encode method that can take in all of the header parameters to compute the output. The core idea is that the caller would have control over the initial inputs so they could derive the hash from the full header to perform the hash comparison out of band with the hash derivation sequence.

Proposed Alternative Solution:
It might make sense to create a more "raw" method that outputs the values in their native format in addition to the standard format that is currently being output. This format would be returned as a class that has say a couple of byte arrays for the salt and hash as well as the version number in a separate variable; essentially this would decompose the header and encoded output into an object for direct storage and consumption.