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 with a new line, right?

Please correct me if I am wrong.

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