grep -rnw '/path/to/somewhere/' -e 'pattern'
-r or -R is recursive,
-n is line number, and
-w stands for match the whole word.
-l (lower-case L) can be added to just give the file name of matching files.
-e is the pattern used during the search
if grep -Fxq "pattern_to_search" file.txt; then #check if pattern string in file
#do something
fi