Shell how to use a command to every regular file in and below the Dir

So what I have to do is find all regular files within and below the directory. For each of these regular files, I have to egrep for patte($ARG) and find out if the output of the file matches the patte ($ARG), if it does it will add one to the counter.

What I have so far is the file command:

$count = 0
file *

However, I am having trouble getting egrep &ARG > /dev/null/ ; echo $? to run through each file that appears from (file *).

I understand that file * | egrep directory > /dev/null ; echo $? will output 0 because it find the patte 'directory' in the file, but am having trouble getting it to loop through each regular file so I can add one to the counter every time the patte is matched.