“Subscript out of range” error message in VBScript

Suddenly one of the existing functions used in QTP for a while started to throw an error: “Subscript out of range”.  error on a line where it was getting assigned an array the results of a Split call “arrLabel = Split(objListLabel.GetROProperty("outertext"), " ")”.

This is a valid statement but it was leaving arrLabel with a null array. The solution I found was to simply repeat the line as seen below. The second time the line is executed arrLabel is populated correctly.

arrLabel = Split(objListLabel.GetROProperty("outertext"), " ")

arrLabel = Split(objListLabel.GetROProperty("outertext"), " ")

If anyone knows the true cause for this error, please share!