Bourne Shell: Graceful way to get exit status

Question

Is there a more graceful way to do this (bourne shell)?

IsThereAnyApplesLeft
applesLeft=$?

Normally in c or java I would do:

applesLeft=IsThereAnyApplesLeft

Answer 1

Exit status is normally used implicit like this:

if IsThereAnyApplesLeft;then
   echo "Apples left"
fi