perl's stat and symlinks

[Michael Naumann <mnaumann@giga-stream.de>]

I have a file f and a symlink sl2f to this file.
ls -l shows the following:
lrwxrwxrwx    1 mn       users           1 Dec 15 16:22 sl2f -> f
-rw-r--r--    1 mn       users           0 Dec 15 16:23 f

when I do from perl
  @f    = stat "f";
  @sl2f = stat "sl2f";
I always get the same contents in @sl2f as in @f, i.e stat follows the link.
Thus I cannot decide via stat,
whether the file in question is a symlink or a not.

Does anybody know how to retrieve this information
without starting a separate programm?

TIA, Michael