Sometimes it is really nice to just take a quick look at some data. However, when working on remote computers, it is a bit of a burden to move data files to a local computer to create a plot in something like R. One solution is to use gnuplot and make a quick plot that is rendered in the terminal. It isn't very pretty by default, but it gets the job done quickly and easily. There are also advanced gnuplot capabilities that aren't covered here at all.
gnuplot has it's own internal syntax that can be fed in as a script, which I won't get into. Here is the very simplified gnuplot code we'll be using:
set terminal dumb size 120, 30; set autoscale; plot '-' using 1:3 with lines notitleLet's break this down: