The patch allows the following syntax for s set/frozenset:
* s.union(a, b, c,...)
* s.update(a, b, c,...)
* s.intersection(a, b, c,...)
* s.intersection_update(a, b, c,...)

By extension:
* set.union(a, b, c,...) # provided a is a set/frozenset
* ...

Union is extended by iterative application of set_union_internal
Intersection is optimized by sorting all sets/frozensets/dicts in 
increasing order of size and only iterating over elements in the 
smallest.

This was discussed on python-ideas:
http://groups.google.com/group/python-
ideas/browse_thread/thread/945a6c989ab905a3/54defd5e62b9a2a6

Time machine -- I already put in a version of this last night.  See 
r64051 and r64055.

Will take a look at your code to see if I can incorporate the sorting 
for insection() and harvest it for more tests.

I must have diffed my patch against the wrong revision then, because I 
haven't seen it.  I had finished it last thursday, but have had a very 
hectic few days and only found a few minutes to send it this evening.  
Something must have gone wrong & the patch must be against last thursday's 
revision I guess.

Anyway it doesn't matter too much as you have started making the changes 
and it's easy to isolate set_intersection, which is a whole new function, 
in the patch file.