I don't understand why.

I understand why. Because it's verbose. Very verbose. If nothing else, this alone keeps it from being seen as a "scripting" language by nearly everybody. If you think, "This task is so simple it shouldn't take me more than 5 minutes to write a script to do it", you're not going to reach for Java. (Of course, there's always the hammer/nail syndrome; but those whose only hammer is Java probably don't believe in "scripting" anyway.)

Does not compile to native machine code but instead runs on a virtual machine of some sort.

I don't think so. There's little to stop Java or Perl compilers from targeting real machines; and a Java or Perl "real machine" could be constructed. In the real world :-), compilers for C targeting virtual machines have been around a long time. So this really can't be a discriminator.

Essentially, whether a language is a "scripting" language or not is really in the mind of the programmer. It's about ease of use; about how quickly one can go from problem to algorithm to solution. Whether the machine running that solution is real or virtual rarely if ever enters into that thought process.

perlfaq1: Is it a Perl program or a Perl script?

Most of the above is a regurgitation of a discussion that occurred in the chatterbox.