Match empty lines in a file with 'grep'

Question

Why does

grep -c \'^\\n\' myfile.txt

return 0 when there are empty lines in the file?

If there is an empty line, it starts

Answer 1

The regular expression to match the end of the line is $, not \n (since grep works a line at a time, it ignores the newlines between lines).

grep -c '^$' myfile.txt

Answer 2

grep and count empty lines like this:

grep -c "^$" myfile.txt

As \n is considered end of line you need to use line start and line end "^$"