Yes good point, as it was formulated. That was clumpsy.
But why is there a need to know the exact amount of tests beforehand? Someone mentioned catching dieing or exits, but that should be easy enough to detect. I suppose it's all down to what philosophy lies behind the test systems from the start: most other systems I've seen have setup and teardown, so it is easy to tell if eveything ran (died after test # 12). Note that this does not mean you have to have a teardown, that's in the base class. Also, they seem to catch any exits and other stuff, so you can get a pass, a fail or an error out of a test, and they usually keep on running the rest. Also quite easy to track.
Is it not possible to have a runner of that kind in Perl, or is it just that everyone sticks with the old stuff? It seems very un-lazy to have to run around updating that number all the time, counting properties manually and so on. I do not see the win.