For example I have a file called test_binary.

MD5 sum of file test is ef7ab26f9a3b2cbd35aa3e7e69aad86c

To test it automatically run this:

$ md5sum -c <<<"ef7ab26f9a3b2cbd35aa3e7e69aad86c *path/to/file/test_binary"

test_binary: OK

or

$ echo "595f44fec1e92a71d3e9e77456ba80d1  filetohashA.txt" | md5sum -c -

Quote from man

   -c, --check

          read MD5 sums from the FILEs and check them

Quote from wiki

Note: There must be two spaces between each md5sum value and filename
to be compared. Otherwise, the following error will result: "no
properly formatted MD5 checksum lines found".

Link to wiki

Also you can just read md5 hashes from file

$ md5sum -c md5sum_formatted_file.txt

It is expecting file with format:

<md5sum_checksum><space><space><file_name>

About * and <space> after MD5 sum hash. There is little note in man:

 When  checking,  the

       input  should  be a former output of this program.  The default mode is

       to print a line with checksum, a character indicating input  mode  ('*'

       for binary, space for text), and name for each FILE.

And here is link to stackoverflow where I found answer on question, why should we, sometimes, distinguish binary files and text files.