Problem:
Score : 300 points

Problem Statement

You are given an array A of length N.
Your task is to divide it into several contiguous subarrays.
Here, all subarrays obtained must be sorted in either non-decreasing or non-increasing order.
At least how many subarrays do you need to divide A into?

Constraints

1 \leq N \leq 10^5

1 \leq A_i \leq 10^9

Each A_i is an integer.

Input

Input is given from Standard Input in the following format:

N
A_1 A_2 ... A_N

Output

Print the minimum possible number of subarrays after division of A.

Sample Input 1

6
1 2 3 2 2 1

Sample Output 1

2

One optimal solution is to divide the array into [1,2,3] and [2,2,1].

Sample Input 2

9
1 2 1 2 1 2 1 2 1

Sample Output 2

5

Sample Input 3

7
1 2 3 2 1 999999999 1000000000

Sample Output 3

3

Solution in Java8 (OpenJDK 1.8.0) (judge verdict: Accepted)

import java.util.*;

public class Main {

	public static void main(String[] args) {
		Scanner sc = new Scanner(System.in);
		int N = sc.nextInt();
		int[] A = new int[N];
		for(int i=0; i<N; i++)
			A[i] = sc.nextInt();
		
		int ans = 1;
		int type=0;
		for(int i=1; i<N; i++) {
			int nextType = A[i-1]==A[i] ? 0 : (A[i-1]<A[i] ? 1 : -1);
			if(type==0) {
				type = nextType;
			} else {
				if(type*nextType<0) {
					ans++;
					type = 0;
				}
			}
		}
		
		System.out.println(ans);
		sc.close();
	}
}