  Generalizing earlier results on the initial data and the final fate of dust
collapse, we study here the relevance of the initial state of a spherically
symmetric matter cloud towards determining its end state in the course of a
continuing gravitational collapse. It is shown that given an arbitrary regular
distribution of matter at the initial epoch, there always exists an evolution
from this initial data which would result either in a black hole or a naked
singularity depending on the allowed choice of free functions available in the
solution. It follows that given any initial density and pressure profiles for
the cloud, there is a non-zero measure set of configurations leading either to
black holes or naked singularities, subject to the usual energy conditions
ensuring the positivity of energy density. We also characterize here wide new
families of black hole solutions resulting from spherically symmetric collapse
without requiring the cosmic censorship assumption.
