Core mass function in NGC 6357 (dashed green curve for all cores) obtained as density distribution of sources after smoothing with a Epanechnikov kernel. The red curve indicates the active region, and the blue curve indicates the more quiescent part. The vertical line marks the 5 M_⊙ completeness limit (see Sect. 3.6). The small coloured bars show the masses of the single sources for each sample, following the colour coding of the distributions.