sed script to replace string?

[Ian McClement]

Hi,
Can someone solve a trivial puzzle that has been annoying me for a while.
I just need to search/replace string1 (variable length) in "......... (INITIAL string1 string2 ........."
I have:
sed -e 's/\((INITIAL \)\(.* \)\(.*\)/\1newstring\3/' but cannot remember how to pattern match on "any no of chars except " " instead of .*
Cheers
Ian

[Rodney Hills]

[^ ]*
The up arrow in in square backets means match everything except whats in the square brackets.

Thus this will match any number of non-space characters.