I would like to use a bash script and qsub to run 30-40 python programs at once. Each python program reads and searches through the same set of files (~400 total) for a set of sequences. Is there a problem where multiple python programs could be trying to read from the same file? If so, what are the consequences?
There are no problems with multiple jobs reading from the same files that are imposed by Torque. (I think that statement is likely to be true for any resource manager / scheduler.)
The main issue I can imagine would be your file system's performance and whether or not it can keep up with potentially concurrent accesses to those files.