Erlang. Параметры в vm.args

В самом верху страницы же есть:

Any argument starting with character + is interpreted as an emulator flag.

As indicated by the name, emulator flags control the behavior of the emulator.

Any argument starting with character - (hyphen) is interpreted as a flag, which is to be passed to the Erlang part of the runtime system, more specifically to the init system process, see init(3).

The init process itself interprets some of these flags, the init flags. It also stores any remaining flags, the user flags. The latter can be retrieved by calling init:get_argument/1.

A small number of «-» flags exist, which now actually are emulator flags, see the description below.

Plain arguments are not interpreted in any way. They are also stored by the init process and can be retrieved by calling init:get_plain_arguments/0. Plain arguments can occur before the first flag, or after a – flag. Also, the -extra flag causes everything that follows to become plain arguments.