  Generalizing earlier results of Joshi and Dwivedi (Commun. Math. Phys. 146,
333 (1992); Lett. Math. Phys. 27, 235 (1993)), we analyze here the spherically
symmetric gravitational collapse of a matter cloud with a general form of
matter for the formation of a naked singularity. It is shown that this is
related basically to the choice of initial data to the Einstein field
equations, and would therefore occur in generic situations from regular initial
data within the general context considered here, subject to the matter
satisfying the weak energy condition. The condition on initial data which leads
to the formation of black hole is also characterized.
