  The mass distribution of prestellar cores is obtained for clouds with
arbitrary internal mass distributions using a selection criterion based on the
thermal and turbulent Jeans mass and applied hierarchically from small to large
scales. We have checked this methodology comparing our results for a lognormal
density PDF with the theoretical CMF derived by Hennebelle and Chabrier, namely
a power-law at large scales and a log-normal cutoff at low scales, but our
method can be applied to any mass distributions representing a star-forming
cloud. This methodology enables us to connect the parental cloud structure with
the mass distribution of the cores and their spatial distribution, providing an
efficient tool for investigating the physical properties of the molecular
clouds that give rise to the prestellar core distributions observed. Simulated
fBm clouds with the Hurst exponent close to the value H=1/3 give the best
agreement with the theoretical CMF derived by Hennebelle and Chabrier and
Chabrier's system IMF. Likewise, the spatial distribution of the cores derived
from our methodology show a surface density of companions compatible with those
observed in Trapezium and Ophiucus star-forming regions. This method also
allows us to analyze the properties of the mass distribution of cores for
different realizations. We found that the variations in the number of cores
formed in different realizations of fBm clouds (with the same Hurst exponent)
are much larger than the expected root N statistical fluctuations, increasing
with H.
