See also
John Ousterhout's comparison of scripting vs. system programming languages. It's somewhat misguided in calling Perl a scripting language and saying
Scripting languages aren't intended for writing applications from scratch; they are intended primarily for plugging together components.
In my mind, to be a script,
- The source code must be ready-to-run. That is, you hand your source file directly to the interpreter and your program is running. Any language could meet this criterion with an "interpreter" that did the compile and run, but C and Java typically don't meet it.
- The language cannot require blocks. A script should be able to run top to bottom without any further structure than lines.
I had thought there would be more requirements, but I think that's it. You can expect that a scripting language will have some form of
eval, but that isn't a defining characteristic.
I also like this brief explanation of the difference.
Caution: Contents may have been coded under pressure.