The manual page for "erl" says
-pa Dir1 Dir2 ... :
Adds the specified directories to the beginning of the
code path ...
But it doesn't - not if you have a .erlang start-up file. When you
have a startup file
it is consulted first, *then* the -pa flag is obeyed. To make life worse the
.erlang file isn't documented in the erl man page at all.
/Joe