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In this paper we demonstrate experimentally the generation of attosecond soft x-ray free-electron laser (XFEL) pulses based on a novel approach to enhanced self-amplified spontaneous emission. Instead of utilizing an external laser, we shape the electron beam at the cathode by laser pulse stacking. We enhance the high-current spike in the beam profile through a self-compression process which uses short-range coherent synchrotron radiation in a wiggler and a downstream magnetic chicane. The undulator taper is then matched with the energy chirp along the beam for attosecond XFEL generation. Start-to-end simulations are performed to demonstrate the proposed method. The measured spectra suggest that a ∼250 as pulse duration is achieved at ∼940 eV in the experiment.