Re Elixir for scripting, what's the point? Procedural Ruby, Perl, Python or bash have been around for decades and are exactly what you need for short sysadmin scripts. Elixir/Erlang's niche is massive lightweight conucurrency and is the wrong tool for this domain.
The Enumerable APIs, regex handling, low-bullshit functional approach, and great REPL make it a pretty nice scripting language. I've done quite a few Advent of Code puzzles with it, and it always feels like such a nice multitool for chewing up the input files into workable formats.
It's not the first tool I'd reach for, I'm still a filthy bash hacker at heart, but I could definitely see using it for the right problem.
It's also just fun to write, which is valuable in its own way.
If your point is that the potential use cases overlap too much with Ruby, I mean, fine, write Ruby. I like Elixir more. I'm not picking either language for pure performance, but rather for ergonomic purposes, so we're into kinda subjective territory.
I often write some little toolets in Elixir, just to hone skills and give myself an opportunity to explore the libray. Often after I e first written it in Python. I agree it feels a little misaligned, but it’s nice to be able to use it for other reasons.
It's nice not to have to switch languages. I use multiple languages but we're not infallible; it would be better if we could write it all in one perfect language that we know really well. Just explaining the desire, I've never touched elixir.
