there is detailed info on stat() at http://www.perldoc.com/perl5.6.1/pod/func/stat.html

summary: in array context, it returns a 13 element array. element 2 is what you want to examine. I.E.

    my @stat_info = stat($filename);
    my $file_mode = $stat_info[2];

    ...

    # or
    my $file_mode = (stat($filename))[2];

    my $file_type = S_IFMT($file_mode)
[download]

file type is still just a bit string, but see the bottom of the above linked page for how to interpret those bits.