"perl... but I think it falls more in line with python and ruby."
Your assertion is so true. Perl and Java actually fall in two different categories in real life, and they are like apple and orange. Java was never targeted to compete with Perl, and I don't think Larry Wall's target was or is to compete with Java, or even create a language for a close purpose.
One of my co-worker created a suite we used to build our system from cvs, and deploy it to testing and production environments, that was a good fit for Perl. Nobody in the team ever questioned whether we should build that suite in Java.
In my real life, I never had a situation where people argured about whether we should do so and so in Java or Perl, but there are times they discuss whether something should be done in .Net or Java. This shows that, there is usually(I added this word after read sporty's reply) a clear cut between Perl and things like Java and .Net. They are just created for different application areas.