Does it implement the greedy matching/parsing of gnuplot? Doesn't look like it?

  pl 'data.dat' u 1:3 w p pt 7 lc 3 tit 'Interesting measurements'

flows from my mind like breathing. I miss that brevity and speed so much when exploring datasets quickly in other languages....

It's not nearly as maintainable as more-verbose and well-specified languages, but it's far more readable than regex :).

Edit to add: simply plotting a two-column data file in Gnuplot is as simple as:

  pl 'data.dat'

the above plots the third column against the first column with blue circular dots and applies annotated text to the key/legend, as I prefer to do when exploring data for the first time...